Although PKI (such a GPG keys) would make privacy and revocation lists a little easier, that is not a part of wave. It wouldn't be too hard to add on to it, but javascript doesn't do crypto, as far as I know.
Javascript could do crypto and google wave does *some* limited crypto for authenticating users (although, I didn't quite understand what they said, so I'll have to review the Federation Day wave, or the Federation Day video -- assuming it's out now). They're not doing crypto for the deltas that are transmitted over the wire (since that would add 2 to 5 milliseconds for each delta -- I think they said). Encrypting the deltas would probably work in a Corporate environment, where you could guarantee that everyone had a recent computer, but Google is aiming for the lowest common denominator here (that said, there is nothing that would be preventing you from forking their implementation, or suggesting that to include it in the wave protocol (just join the protocol discussion google group for that), or even forking their protocol slightly -- you'd just have to use a different name for it -- they seem to be quite open to forks happening actually). And I said, they were doing crypto to authenticate users, but that's not quite right either. They're only doing crypto to authenticate *some* relationships between users (and they talked about merkle-trees, they showed a pretty chart on the board, I think that's the part were I either zoned out or got up to go to the bathroom -- I forget which), but either way, they seemed quite happy with their solution apparently. May be, someone can chime in here, and correct anything that I said incorrectly.
One possible business solution involves generating a wave that's "for internal use only" and then forking a public release. When forking (this is definitely not google's terminology), you can copy over all the discussion or just the final product.
This is one thing that they're definitely working on. I'm not sure how they are going to solve the underlying issue, but they said this was becoming a big issue for them as the wave is already used quite a lot internally at Google, and now that they're giving accounts to outsiders -- they're afraid of accidentally releasing sensitive proprietary information out into the wild.
Also, if I read correctly, there is no way to "revoke" a wave, or delete content for that matter.
Also, if I understood correctly, try to look to the code, not the documentation. They said the documentation was in sync during the Google Federation Day, which was two days ago, but I got the sense that the docs will usually lag behind the code (and lag behind the discussion of the protocol on the public google group).
Well, you can download a crude prototype of the server if you want now. The released prototype is still alpha, but it can run outside of the Google infrastructure, so it's past the stage of the tech demo at least (where everything is just smokes and mirrors, which I understand was actually the case during Google I/O). So the transparency has at least began, so to speak.
Not in this case, they're labeling this version 0.2, so it's still quite alpha, and still a bit of a moving target, but you can download the code (someone else here just posted the link to it) and you can contribute to the protocol discussion (they have a google group for it). It's in Java, but I'd suggest you install it on Linux (On Windows, it doesn't work quite right yet, or at least it didn't work quite right two days ago). Also, someone mentioned during the wave federation day that someone outside of Google had written a python version of it (that one should be findable if you just google for it, in fact I suspect there are a number of third party implementations that have popped up all over the place since two days ago). Also, I should say that Google Day Federation day was videotaped, so that should be showing up soon on google video -- if it isn't already on there. Now, if anyone wants a copy of the wave (taken that day), and doesn't have a wave account yet, I can post it here (although, that too, I suspect must have already been published on the web if you just google it). Or if you have a wave account, I can certainly add you to that wave -- if you were not there that day.
Revolutionary, no. Evolutionary, yes (although, I'm sure that some people will keep on being overly enthusiastic about Google Wave, hype is going to happen either way).
Also, if you accept my premise that Wikis and/or Google Docs can be very useful already, I think Wave improves on those two because it's far less Web-site-centric and less Document-centric than those are.
So for instance, if you're an Engineer as opposed to an HR employee in the same company, only a cross-section of your HR wiki may only be even relevant to you. And yet, a wiki is very much like a web site, its navigation must be very carefully thought out, and often it's often being supplemented with people emailing specific links to wiki pages -- to workaround the fact that the wiki is structured like a web site.
So in a sense, Google Wave integrates all of that. Google Wave is much more communication-centric as opposed to site-centric or page-centric. With Google Wave, you don't need to keep tabs on the Recent Changes of an entire Wiki site, and/or you don't need to subscribe to individual wiki pages each time you're interested in one (most wiki engines I've seen don't have elegant subscription-systems). And it's not like maintaining a large list of Documents, because over time the cross-section of Waves you've been invited too (or that you've started yourself) disappears from view if they haven't changed. So in that sense as well, Google Wave should help cut down on clutter.
Also, if you want to have a private side-conversation with someone on a Wave, Wave allows anyone to start a Private Wave within a Wave (without it being visible to everyone in the parent wave who weren't invited to it). That again, cuts down on clutter.
So a Wave can be a much more informal, organic, and even ephemeral, way of communicating. Google Wave, when finished, is even supposed to have an 'Off the Record' button. That button won't be full-proof. People will be able to override it if they want to, but basically pressing that button will prevent the Wave from being saved, being archived/versioned (otherwise, Wave will version every little change, which can be played back from a slider), and/or being sent to anyone else (although, like they said, Google has no intention of building DRM into Wave, which would be an exercise in futility (it runs so contrary to the underlying principles Wave is inspired from), but at least, this 'Off The Record' button would provide a reasonable way to have an informal conversation 'off the record' -- 'off the archive' -- so to speak).
Re:This may seem obvious to some, but...
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Google Wave Reviewed
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· Score: 2, Informative
Have you ever tried editing a document through back and forth emails? If so, that should cut down on that. It will never completely replace email, but it should help reduce the number of messages, and/or the number of threads you have in your inbox.
A wiki, or a google doc, could do that too, but not in real-time. And also, using a separate wiki, or a separate google doc, forces you to change context, so in a way -- it pulls those different ways of communicating into workspace/work flow -- so you're not forced to switch context every time you change content type (which can make you waste a lot of time).
This is missing the point of Wave. It's not patented. It's open sourced. It's federated (with no central authority). There is nothing preventing a company, or an individual, from setting up their own wave server (either the one given away for free by Google, or another one developed by a third party), and not sharing one piece of data with Google.
That's what makes the proposition so compelling. Google is not trying to lock in your data. It's doing everything it can to do the opposite actually.
So overall, I'd give Google Wave a five stars out of five.
And I should also mention, that although the Google Wave Inbox wave inbox didn't refresh reliably for me, the Wave itself (on the other hand) had no problem refreshing (even with all the simultaneous edits going on at the same time, that part actually performed flawlessly thru out).
Re:This may seem obvious to some, but...
on
Google Wave Reviewed
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Does the expression "on crack" mean, "better"? And if so, why?
The "on crack" comment is so vague, it says a lot more about the reviewer than the technology being reviewed.
That being said, since I also participated in two Google events in which we were using the Google Wave technology, I'm going to give you my own personal review (which may be as bad as the initial review, it's mostly a disorganized brain dump at this point, so bear with me as well). I did agree to an NDA during those google events, these last couple of times you actually can't get in if you don't agree to one, but I don't think Google is the type to enforce it on me, especially since my review is mostly positive overall (even if it includes a few barbs).
First off, here is my description of Google Wave, it's a cross between a Wiki and an Instant Messenger (with some added capabilities that may not seem initially obvious to everyone, but that will seem completely obvious to power users of the wiki technology and power users of the instant messengers technology). And each Wave itself is the equivalent of a wiki page (if that makes any sense).
Now here is my first impression of Google Wave, which differs significantly from my overall final impression of it. Google Wave is buggy (even in Windows Chrome and Firefox, and even in Windows Safari which does support HTML 5 and which is supposedly faster, and I was advised not to use IE with it -- so I assume that this part is even more buggier still). The initial inbox interface looks rather busy and clunky (especially from a Company like Google, I just didn't expect an interface like that). Searching for your friends (who already have wave sandbox accounts) and adding them to your address book works only 90% of the time (although, that part does work 100% of the time if you go to your gmail address book that comes with your new wave sandbox account, you just have to know to use that workaround -- otherwise you just get frustrated by it especially since the interface doesn't give you back useful informative feedback that something went wrong). Also, the inbox doesn't always refresh (even on a blazing fast guest connection inside the googleplex campus). And initially, I was quite baffled by the wave inbox interface. I had created ten empty waves by mistake, that I didn't know how to delete (now, I know how thought, at least I think I would know how to delete them, I haven't tried it yet).
Where Google Wave shines however is in its actual use (even in its buggy alpha state, it's actually quite useful, I would totally use it if I could get my colleagues accounts), and it's in the actual wave itself (not the surrounding interface). I don't know how many we were, may be 150 or 200? May be 70% of us had laptops in front of us. May be 30 or 40% of us had the actual wave opened, others were doing something else on their laptops or had them semi-closed. And may be only 4 or 5 were taking actual notes (one or two were doing the bulk of the notes). The notes were excellent. Everything that was being said was transcribed live, "livewaving" that's what the google employees called it (just like for Twitter, the Google employees had many cutesy-cheesy names for everything wave was doing), and the notes/statements/questions said out lout during the presentations were clarified, corrected, rephrased, and formatted by two or three people (just a couple of lines above where they had been captured). There was no coordination whatsoever, people just added things wherever they felt they could contribute. Also, the initial attempt at coordination by the Google organizers was foiled, because they were too slow to create the group and start an official wave on their own, the participants already had a wave underway by the time they started -- so that became the official one by default.
At the same time the notes were being taken, there were a few more participants who started a couple of threads (within the wave itself, just at the bottom -- a couple of scroll
Three problems with this scheme. As far as I'm aware, this former cop is not a public body, so this doesn't apply to him. And in the US, yes I know, the UK is not in the US, but (bear with my ignorance here) in the US FOI requests are not designed to generate lots of revenue for the governmental entity in question, so technically speaking, if he was a public body (which he's not, but if he was and if he was in the US), another government agency could make the request for the entire database encrypted and loaded unto a DVD (or a couple of DVDs), and that would count as just *one* request -- not 40 millions separate ones (and he would only be allowed to charge the maximum rate allowed by FOIA for that request, which is really not much, and then the other government agency could turn around, and give out this information to each person concerned for free).
And last but not least, the third reason, again this is in the US, or at least in California. If someone knows that a person's personal data has been breached, he's obligated under the current law to notify each potential victim of that breach (otherwise, it's a crime if he doesn't notify them, plus he doesn't receive immunity if he doesn't -- which is the current carrot we give companies/governmental agencies to disclose compromised information -- otherwise no company/agency in their right mind would disclose such embarrassing news).
Also there are only three ways one can procure this information. 1) He got it from government agencies (therefore, it's private information that the government owns, not information that one sole private individual owns), 2) He purchased this information directly from the bad guys (thereby, he's been personally funding them), and/or 3) He got this information directly from the Corporations breached themselves (therefore, he's been inducing those Corporations into leaking even more information than they already were).
When are we arresting this guy? Can we send a black plane over there and make him disappear?
You could write a blog post called 'Why are the articles on NYT so bad?' That being said, you'd need to mix-in google, Microsoft, or Wikipedia in your title, otherwise you'd never get it accepted as a submission on Slashdot. And then, you'd get your answer, NYT is so bad because it's limited to the topics it can write about. We think of NYT as a trend-setter, but it's really just a trend-follower, just like Slashdot, always trying to get new readers by recycling the same old keywords and the same old news every day.
eVoting already happens. I vote on American Idol electronically every chance I get. On some occasions, I even vote more than once. At $2 a pop, it's a good way to show that I care about the outcome. I wish every election were done like that on Fox TV.
Apparently they care more about freedom than having the highest quality images available. What more is there to say?
Also, Wikipedia cares more about accuracy (not just freedom). The primary example cited by that NYT article is not the primary picture shown on Halle Berry's Wikipedia page, it's only the second picture shown on that page, and that picture is only one of seven pictures designed to show the progression of her career.
In 1987, Halle Berry was a no-name first-time television actor and a failed Miss USA contestant (can anyone find her as one of the 50 finalists? I personally couldn't), it's actually very likely no good professional photograph had even been taken of her at that time (or may be it was, but it's just not findable). And perhaps, Halle Berry could have supplied a decent family picture of herself around that time period, but I doubt she'd want to highlight that initial part of her career. Hollywood is all about maintaining a sense of mystery and glamor, it's not about exposing what lies behind the curtain.
Your assumption is reasonable, but wrong. My school had an Asian (East Asian) super-majority, but that didn't change the fact that there were plenty of parties and/or organizations for Asians-only, but none whatsoever for whites-only.
I think this stems from the fact that students, even students from a race that's a local majority, see themselves in the larger context of society as a whole. And in that larger context, they still see themselves as a minority.
Also, I think the legal system is poorly equipped to deal with exceptions and degrees of discrimination. Racism is not some binary thing. For instance, an Asian kid growing up in Ohio or Alabama is going to have a vastly different experience than let's say if he was living in California in some East Asian enclave.
The thing I'd like to know is. How much does it cost to send my own kids to China for a bootcamp? Do they need to know Chinese? I don't have any kids yet, nor a girlfriend yet. I'm just pre-planning.
Personally when the day comes, I won't need a compass. I can usually orient myself pretty well without any tools. Can't you?
That being said, I find geolocation pretty handy. With Google Latitude, I know where my friends are, and they know where I am (plus, google also gives me traffic conditions). With Trapster, I know where I can speed, and where I shouldn't. With GasBuddy, I know where the price of gas is the cheapest, and the nearest. And I know I haven't tried most of the gps apps out there yet.
Satellite navigation is really convenient (and what's more, most of the time you don't even need to have it turned on).
And as time goes on, its error-correction through software and through other means is only going to improve, so I'm really not worried about solar radiation.
Southwest people are trained to smile and be cheerful. American Air doesn't.
Southwest has less delays and is more profitable and the passagers are better behaved and quiet and cuterious of others.
"Cuterious"? I've always wanted to ride in airplanes where the passengers were more cute, and more curious of others.
In any case, American Air has a centralized power structure, Southwest has less of one. In other words, if there is a problem, a lowly Southwest employee has far more leeway in making decisions than an American Airlines employee does.
That in my opinion, is what gives Southwest the ability to have less delays and be more profitable than American Airlines (not the amount of superficial fake-sounding Dale Carnegie training they've had).
Get yourself a computer projector (if you do your research, you can get a very good one for a decent price). Experiment with projecting on the wall (or on the ceiling of your basement). If your basement doesn't have a good spot for projecting on to. Build yourself your own custom projection screen (see the instructables web site to see how it's done right). Hang it from the ceiling, and use some ropes and a couple of mini-pulleys to tilt it to the angle you prefer (assuming you do want it tilted, also if nothing else, this pulley system could be used to fold the screen toward the ceiling if the screen gets in the way when not in use). Also, I suppose you could use some nylon strings and some metal hooks if you don't like the idea of ropes and pulleys.
Now a projector and a projection screen may not be the perfect set up for reading text, especially reading pdfs, but I think it's getting better (although admittedly, I would never read an entire ebook with it). And perhaps, the other slashdoters could suggest ways to optimize such a set up to facilitate reading (I'm hoping).
Now putting that question of readability aside for someone else: once your budget allows, you can start adding accessories to help with the navigation. Wireless mouse. Wireless keyboard. Wireless tablet. The clapper, clap on -- clap off, when you're in bed (currently sold at Walgreens for not too much I think, thought I have no idea how it would affect the projector cutting its power off, and turning it back on, like that). An additional LCD screen. Two or three cheap laser pointers (preferably of different colors), to be used when your friends are coming over (and yes, you may get some friends coming over more frequently because of this), and since only one person is usually in control of the mouse when everybody is looking at the screen (on occasion, it helps to give your friends laser pointers). iPod Touch, a remote control, or an existing smartphone to be used as a wireless remote control (the thing is, a good remote control device doesn't have to be too elaborate to be useful -- since you will be doing most of your reading/browsing on the screen anyway, and using your own cell phone gives you the added benefit to pause the sound/pause the movie whenever you receive an important call, and also possibly get additional caller-id on-the-fly from http://whocalled.us/ ).
And on the topic of the FoxIt PDF reader, that's an awesome piece of software, but it's been getting bloated and buggier in the past few months (or in the past year?). I'd suggest that if you have an old copy of Foxit, that you hold on to it, back it up, and/or burn it to a disk or something. And lacking an old copy, I'd suggest you try PDF xChange Viewer, that's a good alternative in my opinion.
Now I know that some people have their pdf ebooks read to them by their computers (with different computer voices and at different speeds depending on the ebook) but I've never liked that option and I don't think that option would work for most people (even with the better voice reading technology). May be you should try to have your mom (or your girlfriend -- whichever applies in your case) come down to the basement and read to you what's on the projection screen while you're lying in the Hammock with your eyes closed. That last option sounds kind of nice actually.:-)
Agreed. ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) is something that all defense workers are trained in.
Except that he wasn't an employee, he was a consultant/contractor who earned a measly $6,000 from the US Air Force. It's such a low amount, he probably got it from a drone contest or something. And I'm sorry, but a EULA from ITAR a la Netscape doesn't constitute proper training, and an occasional mass email from an Exports Control Officer doesn't constitute a proper warning either. Who reads those anyway? Do you? Do you think a seventy year old would? Damn, I should probably take a look at the National Security-related papers I've signed every time I've entered a Nokia building. The US is going crazy again.
Slashdot Mirror
Javascript could do crypto and google wave does *some* limited crypto for authenticating users (although, I didn't quite understand what they said, so I'll have to review the Federation Day wave, or the Federation Day video -- assuming it's out now). They're not doing crypto for the deltas that are transmitted over the wire (since that would add 2 to 5 milliseconds for each delta -- I think they said). Encrypting the deltas would probably work in a Corporate environment, where you could guarantee that everyone had a recent computer, but Google is aiming for the lowest common denominator here (that said, there is nothing that would be preventing you from forking their implementation, or suggesting that to include it in the wave protocol (just join the protocol discussion google group for that), or even forking their protocol slightly -- you'd just have to use a different name for it -- they seem to be quite open to forks happening actually). And I said, they were doing crypto to authenticate users, but that's not quite right either. They're only doing crypto to authenticate *some* relationships between users (and they talked about merkle-trees, they showed a pretty chart on the board, I think that's the part were I either zoned out or got up to go to the bathroom -- I forget which), but either way, they seemed quite happy with their solution apparently. May be, someone can chime in here, and correct anything that I said incorrectly.
This is one thing that they're definitely working on. I'm not sure how they are going to solve the underlying issue, but they said this was becoming a big issue for them as the wave is already used quite a lot internally at Google, and now that they're giving accounts to outsiders -- they're afraid of accidentally releasing sensitive proprietary information out into the wild.
Also, if I understood correctly, try to look to the code, not the documentation. They said the documentation was in sync during the Google Federation Day, which was two days ago, but I got the sense that the docs will usually lag behind the code (and lag behind the discussion of the protocol on the public google group).
Well, you can download a crude prototype of the server if you want now. The released prototype is still alpha, but it can run outside of the Google infrastructure, so it's past the stage of the tech demo at least (where everything is just smokes and mirrors, which I understand was actually the case during Google I/O). So the transparency has at least began, so to speak.
In case you don't have a Mercurial client on hand, here is the link to it to browse it from the web.
Not in this case, they're labeling this version 0.2, so it's still quite alpha, and still a bit of a moving target, but you can download the code (someone else here just posted the link to it) and you can contribute to the protocol discussion (they have a google group for it). It's in Java, but I'd suggest you install it on Linux (On Windows, it doesn't work quite right yet, or at least it didn't work quite right two days ago). Also, someone mentioned during the wave federation day that someone outside of Google had written a python version of it (that one should be findable if you just google for it, in fact I suspect there are a number of third party implementations that have popped up all over the place since two days ago). Also, I should say that Google Day Federation day was videotaped, so that should be showing up soon on google video -- if it isn't already on there. Now, if anyone wants a copy of the wave (taken that day), and doesn't have a wave account yet, I can post it here (although, that too, I suspect must have already been published on the web if you just google it). Or if you have a wave account, I can certainly add you to that wave -- if you were not there that day.
Revolutionary, no. Evolutionary, yes (although, I'm sure that some people will keep on being overly enthusiastic about Google Wave, hype is going to happen either way).
Also, if you accept my premise that Wikis and/or Google Docs can be very useful already, I think Wave improves on those two because it's far less Web-site-centric and less Document-centric than those are.
So for instance, if you're an Engineer as opposed to an HR employee in the same company, only a cross-section of your HR wiki may only be even relevant to you. And yet, a wiki is very much like a web site, its navigation must be very carefully thought out, and often it's often being supplemented with people emailing specific links to wiki pages -- to workaround the fact that the wiki is structured like a web site.
So in a sense, Google Wave integrates all of that. Google Wave is much more communication-centric as opposed to site-centric or page-centric. With Google Wave, you don't need to keep tabs on the Recent Changes of an entire Wiki site, and/or you don't need to subscribe to individual wiki pages each time you're interested in one (most wiki engines I've seen don't have elegant subscription-systems). And it's not like maintaining a large list of Documents, because over time the cross-section of Waves you've been invited too (or that you've started yourself) disappears from view if they haven't changed. So in that sense as well, Google Wave should help cut down on clutter.
Also, if you want to have a private side-conversation with someone on a Wave, Wave allows anyone to start a Private Wave within a Wave (without it being visible to everyone in the parent wave who weren't invited to it). That again, cuts down on clutter.
So a Wave can be a much more informal, organic, and even ephemeral, way of communicating. Google Wave, when finished, is even supposed to have an 'Off the Record' button. That button won't be full-proof. People will be able to override it if they want to, but basically pressing that button will prevent the Wave from being saved, being archived/versioned (otherwise, Wave will version every little change, which can be played back from a slider), and/or being sent to anyone else (although, like they said, Google has no intention of building DRM into Wave, which would be an exercise in futility (it runs so contrary to the underlying principles Wave is inspired from), but at least, this 'Off The Record' button would provide a reasonable way to have an informal conversation 'off the record' -- 'off the archive' -- so to speak).
Have you ever tried editing a document through back and forth emails? If so, that should cut down on that. It will never completely replace email, but it should help reduce the number of messages, and/or the number of threads you have in your inbox.
A wiki, or a google doc, could do that too, but not in real-time. And also, using a separate wiki, or a separate google doc, forces you to change context, so in a way -- it pulls those different ways of communicating into workspace/work flow -- so you're not forced to switch context every time you change content type (which can make you waste a lot of time).
This is missing the point of Wave. It's not patented. It's open sourced. It's federated (with no central authority). There is nothing preventing a company, or an individual, from setting up their own wave server (either the one given away for free by Google, or another one developed by a third party), and not sharing one piece of data with Google.
That's what makes the proposition so compelling. Google is not trying to lock in your data. It's doing everything it can to do the opposite actually.
So overall, I'd give Google Wave a five stars out of five.
And I should also mention, that although the Google Wave Inbox wave inbox didn't refresh reliably for me, the Wave itself (on the other hand) had no problem refreshing (even with all the simultaneous edits going on at the same time, that part actually performed flawlessly thru out).
The "on crack" comment is so vague, it says a lot more about the reviewer than the technology being reviewed.
That being said, since I also participated in two Google events in which we were using the Google Wave technology, I'm going to give you my own personal review (which may be as bad as the initial review, it's mostly a disorganized brain dump at this point, so bear with me as well). I did agree to an NDA during those google events, these last couple of times you actually can't get in if you don't agree to one, but I don't think Google is the type to enforce it on me, especially since my review is mostly positive overall (even if it includes a few barbs).
First off, here is my description of Google Wave, it's a cross between a Wiki and an Instant Messenger (with some added capabilities that may not seem initially obvious to everyone, but that will seem completely obvious to power users of the wiki technology and power users of the instant messengers technology). And each Wave itself is the equivalent of a wiki page (if that makes any sense).
Now here is my first impression of Google Wave, which differs significantly from my overall final impression of it. Google Wave is buggy (even in Windows Chrome and Firefox, and even in Windows Safari which does support HTML 5 and which is supposedly faster, and I was advised not to use IE with it -- so I assume that this part is even more buggier still). The initial inbox interface looks rather busy and clunky (especially from a Company like Google, I just didn't expect an interface like that). Searching for your friends (who already have wave sandbox accounts) and adding them to your address book works only 90% of the time (although, that part does work 100% of the time if you go to your gmail address book that comes with your new wave sandbox account, you just have to know to use that workaround -- otherwise you just get frustrated by it especially since the interface doesn't give you back useful informative feedback that something went wrong). Also, the inbox doesn't always refresh (even on a blazing fast guest connection inside the googleplex campus). And initially, I was quite baffled by the wave inbox interface. I had created ten empty waves by mistake, that I didn't know how to delete (now, I know how thought, at least I think I would know how to delete them, I haven't tried it yet).
Where Google Wave shines however is in its actual use (even in its buggy alpha state, it's actually quite useful, I would totally use it if I could get my colleagues accounts), and it's in the actual wave itself (not the surrounding interface). I don't know how many we were, may be 150 or 200? May be 70% of us had laptops in front of us. May be 30 or 40% of us had the actual wave opened, others were doing something else on their laptops or had them semi-closed. And may be only 4 or 5 were taking actual notes (one or two were doing the bulk of the notes). The notes were excellent. Everything that was being said was transcribed live, "livewaving" that's what the google employees called it (just like for Twitter, the Google employees had many cutesy-cheesy names for everything wave was doing), and the notes/statements/questions said out lout during the presentations were clarified, corrected, rephrased, and formatted by two or three people (just a couple of lines above where they had been captured). There was no coordination whatsoever, people just added things wherever they felt they could contribute. Also, the initial attempt at coordination by the Google organizers was foiled, because they were too slow to create the group and start an official wave on their own, the participants already had a wave underway by the time they started -- so that became the official one by default.
At the same time the notes were being taken, there were a few more participants who started a couple of threads (within the wave itself, just at the bottom -- a couple of scroll
Three problems with this scheme. As far as I'm aware, this former cop is not a public body, so this doesn't apply to him. And in the US, yes I know, the UK is not in the US, but (bear with my ignorance here) in the US FOI requests are not designed to generate lots of revenue for the governmental entity in question, so technically speaking, if he was a public body (which he's not, but if he was and if he was in the US), another government agency could make the request for the entire database encrypted and loaded unto a DVD (or a couple of DVDs), and that would count as just *one* request -- not 40 millions separate ones (and he would only be allowed to charge the maximum rate allowed by FOIA for that request, which is really not much, and then the other government agency could turn around, and give out this information to each person concerned for free).
And last but not least, the third reason, again this is in the US, or at least in California. If someone knows that a person's personal data has been breached, he's obligated under the current law to notify each potential victim of that breach (otherwise, it's a crime if he doesn't notify them, plus he doesn't receive immunity if he doesn't -- which is the current carrot we give companies/governmental agencies to disclose compromised information -- otherwise no company/agency in their right mind would disclose such embarrassing news).
Also there are only three ways one can procure this information. 1) He got it from government agencies (therefore, it's private information that the government owns, not information that one sole private individual owns), 2) He purchased this information directly from the bad guys (thereby, he's been personally funding them), and/or 3) He got this information directly from the Corporations breached themselves (therefore, he's been inducing those Corporations into leaking even more information than they already were).
When are we arresting this guy? Can we send a black plane over there and make him disappear?
If you're *lucky enough* to have the thief keep it on and keep it logged in, then there is a chance you can remote back into it.
Me? Actually read the articles? You must be new around here.
You could write a blog post called 'Why are the articles on NYT so bad?' That being said, you'd need to mix-in google, Microsoft, or Wikipedia in your title, otherwise you'd never get it accepted as a submission on Slashdot. And then, you'd get your answer, NYT is so bad because it's limited to the topics it can write about. We think of NYT as a trend-setter, but it's really just a trend-follower, just like Slashdot, always trying to get new readers by recycling the same old keywords and the same old news every day.
Good catch. That makes sense. And it totally blows my theory out of the water of her having no professional shots of her.
eVoting already happens. I vote on American Idol electronically every chance I get. On some occasions, I even vote more than once. At $2 a pop, it's a good way to show that I care about the outcome. I wish every election were done like that on Fox TV.
Also, Wikipedia cares more about accuracy (not just freedom). The primary example cited by that NYT article is not the primary picture shown on Halle Berry's Wikipedia page, it's only the second picture shown on that page, and that picture is only one of seven pictures designed to show the progression of her career.
In 1987, Halle Berry was a no-name first-time television actor and a failed Miss USA contestant (can anyone find her as one of the 50 finalists? I personally couldn't), it's actually very likely no good professional photograph had even been taken of her at that time (or may be it was, but it's just not findable). And perhaps, Halle Berry could have supplied a decent family picture of herself around that time period, but I doubt she'd want to highlight that initial part of her career. Hollywood is all about maintaining a sense of mystery and glamor, it's not about exposing what lies behind the curtain.
Your assumption is reasonable, but wrong. My school had an Asian (East Asian) super-majority, but that didn't change the fact that there were plenty of parties and/or organizations for Asians-only, but none whatsoever for whites-only.
I think this stems from the fact that students, even students from a race that's a local majority, see themselves in the larger context of society as a whole. And in that larger context, they still see themselves as a minority.
Also, I think the legal system is poorly equipped to deal with exceptions and degrees of discrimination. Racism is not some binary thing. For instance, an Asian kid growing up in Ohio or Alabama is going to have a vastly different experience than let's say if he was living in California in some East Asian enclave.
Me too. I tried using google on those keywords, but all I'm finding is a bunch of porn sites.
[Citation needed]
The reason I'm asking is because I've known several people who've worked in embassies over there, and this is not what they've told me about it.
The thing I'd like to know is. How much does it cost to send my own kids to China for a bootcamp? Do they need to know Chinese? I don't have any kids yet, nor a girlfriend yet. I'm just pre-planning.
Personally when the day comes, I won't need a compass. I can usually orient myself pretty well without any tools. Can't you?
That being said, I find geolocation pretty handy. With Google Latitude, I know where my friends are, and they know where I am (plus, google also gives me traffic conditions). With Trapster, I know where I can speed, and where I shouldn't. With GasBuddy, I know where the price of gas is the cheapest, and the nearest. And I know I haven't tried most of the gps apps out there yet. Satellite navigation is really convenient (and what's more, most of the time you don't even need to have it turned on).
And as time goes on, its error-correction through software and through other means is only going to improve, so I'm really not worried about solar radiation.
"Cuterious"? I've always wanted to ride in airplanes where the passengers were more cute, and more curious of others.
In any case, American Air has a centralized power structure, Southwest has less of one. In other words, if there is a problem, a lowly Southwest employee has far more leeway in making decisions than an American Airlines employee does. That in my opinion, is what gives Southwest the ability to have less delays and be more profitable than American Airlines (not the amount of superficial fake-sounding Dale Carnegie training they've had).
Get yourself a computer projector (if you do your research, you can get a very good one for a decent price). Experiment with projecting on the wall (or on the ceiling of your basement). If your basement doesn't have a good spot for projecting on to. Build yourself your own custom projection screen (see the instructables web site to see how it's done right). Hang it from the ceiling, and use some ropes and a couple of mini-pulleys to tilt it to the angle you prefer (assuming you do want it tilted, also if nothing else, this pulley system could be used to fold the screen toward the ceiling if the screen gets in the way when not in use). Also, I suppose you could use some nylon strings and some metal hooks if you don't like the idea of ropes and pulleys.
Now a projector and a projection screen may not be the perfect set up for reading text, especially reading pdfs, but I think it's getting better (although admittedly, I would never read an entire ebook with it). And perhaps, the other slashdoters could suggest ways to optimize such a set up to facilitate reading (I'm hoping).
Now putting that question of readability aside for someone else: once your budget allows, you can start adding accessories to help with the navigation. Wireless mouse. Wireless keyboard. Wireless tablet. The clapper, clap on -- clap off, when you're in bed (currently sold at Walgreens for not too much I think, thought I have no idea how it would affect the projector cutting its power off, and turning it back on, like that). An additional LCD screen. Two or three cheap laser pointers (preferably of different colors), to be used when your friends are coming over (and yes, you may get some friends coming over more frequently because of this), and since only one person is usually in control of the mouse when everybody is looking at the screen (on occasion, it helps to give your friends laser pointers). iPod Touch, a remote control, or an existing smartphone to be used as a wireless remote control (the thing is, a good remote control device doesn't have to be too elaborate to be useful -- since you will be doing most of your reading/browsing on the screen anyway, and using your own cell phone gives you the added benefit to pause the sound/pause the movie whenever you receive an important call, and also possibly get additional caller-id on-the-fly from http://whocalled.us/ ).
And on the topic of the FoxIt PDF reader, that's an awesome piece of software, but it's been getting bloated and buggier in the past few months (or in the past year?). I'd suggest that if you have an old copy of Foxit, that you hold on to it, back it up, and/or burn it to a disk or something. And lacking an old copy, I'd suggest you try PDF xChange Viewer, that's a good alternative in my opinion.
Now I know that some people have their pdf ebooks read to them by their computers (with different computer voices and at different speeds depending on the ebook) but I've never liked that option and I don't think that option would work for most people (even with the better voice reading technology). May be you should try to have your mom (or your girlfriend -- whichever applies in your case) come down to the basement and read to you what's on the projection screen while you're lying in the Hammock with your eyes closed. That last option sounds kind of nice actually. :-)
Except that he wasn't an employee, he was a consultant/contractor who earned a measly $6,000 from the US Air Force. It's such a low amount, he probably got it from a drone contest or something. And I'm sorry, but a EULA from ITAR a la Netscape doesn't constitute proper training, and an occasional mass email from an Exports Control Officer doesn't constitute a proper warning either. Who reads those anyway? Do you? Do you think a seventy year old would? Damn, I should probably take a look at the National Security-related papers I've signed every time I've entered a Nokia building. The US is going crazy again.