Normally, I'd say that the parent was being unhelpful, but in this case with the the Scripting Layer 4 Android (SL4A) already having done most of the work for you, it would actually pretty easy to do this. Here are the beginning of their instructions:
Introduction Part of the SL4A project is to define an API for others to develop new interpreters that SL4A (or any other compatible project) can support. Currently, this standard is for interpreters that can be run as a binary in a separate process. This standard will be extended in the future to also support running JVM based interpreters in process.
The Easy Way is a step-by-step description of how to build an interpreter APK that is compatible with SL4A. The Way of Samurai describes how to use the interpreter.jar in your own project to interface with SL4A. The Way of Zen describes the API in detail.
[...]
And yes, I'm aware that the original question mentions SL4A, but says that that it doesn't provide "exhaustive" access to the platform, which triggers the question for me, what access does he want? Just tell me one thing that he wants (please not a fully shopping list), just have him pick one item, and I'll show him how he can add it to the the Scripting Layer for Android himself.
And yes, I do realize that's really not the original question that he was asking, and to that, I'd reply that not everyone in life always get what they want. "Basic" may be at the center of his Universe right now, but it's certainly not the de facto language for everyone these days and it would be presumptuous for him to think that his opinion should override everyone else's opinion on the matter. And it would also be presumptuous to think that a big faceless corporation, with so many developers and so many resources, should cater to *his* every individual needs all because it would be so simple and so easy to do for them. I'm afraid that's not how corporations work. Corporations usually have their own agendas and their own whims to cater to.
One additional point that hasn't been mentioned yet is that the price of an ebook usually has lower printing, inventory, and distribution costs than an actual physical book, a fact which is not usually reflected in its price. And sometimes, the ebook version can be the only copy available if the book is out of print in the real world.
And there is also the possibility that some ebooks help drive the sales of their physical counterparts sometimes. Now, I'm not saying that this happens all the time, but in the case of very high quality books, having the electronic version of it is often not enough, and having a good electronic version can often drive one to track down a copy of the real physical book in question.
Technically, their intent was to fork it. The Chinese government was adamant about not wanting any secret US back-doors in it.
My guess is that they probably did it just like our US Department of Defense. They probably froze it to an older version to try to secure that at least, and then when they finally could deliver something to their bosses, they got yelled at for delivering a version so old, that Google had already published at least half-a-dozen new major versions in the mean time.
I'm an app developer. The Android market is bigger, but far fewer people are willing to part with their money. It's far less profitable.
Yes, it's less profitable, but already a few month ago, some game app companies have started announcing that they're getting more profits from their Android side than their iOS side, when everything else they were doing was identical, so the tide seems to be starting to turn at the very least.
The rate of growth for the Android developer community is shrinking.
I would certainly hope so. It can't keep on growing at a zillion percent forever. It was playing catch up for a while, but now it's leveling off as it's catching up with iOS. And unlike you, it isn't just a feeling I'm having, I can actually point to Android developer meetups in my area that have started surpassing the number of developers from the iOS meetups (although, those Android meetups were started much later than their iOS counterparts)
There are far, far fewer apps for all Android tablets than there are for the iPad. Very few clients of mine are interested in Android. I only recommend Android versions of the apps I build occasionally. It's usually iOS only.
Android tablets, yes. Android phones, that's another story.
Weren't we just talking about all Android developers just a paragraph above? Most are still learning about Android tablet development. Most haven't moved to Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich yet. The Android developer community is still less mature than the iOS community, I'll openly make that concession to you at least, but like I said earlier, I can point to more developers opting for Android when initially being given the choice between iOS or Android. That, I have no doubt in my mind.
And I do see clients that come to Android, that do not even consider iOS a viable option. They're Medical research companies and Medical manufacturers that love the iPad, but that realize iOS will never be open enough to do anything of what they have in mind with it, so they're going with the default choice instead, which is Android. Just don't count on any of those apps appearing as revenue for the Android Market anytime soon, those apps are usually part of a much larger deal where lots of money is exchanged hands, and the Android developers are well compensated, but that money just doesn't flow through any app store or even Google to begin with.
For personal projects, I don't target Android unless it's something I would use myself (I have an Android phone because I like a physical keyboard. I hate the software because it's embarrassingly low quality).
That's weird you would say that. Do you have an original Droid by any chance?
For me, I'm actually typing faster and more accurately in French with my Nexus S (with the X Swift software keyboard) than I can type on any of my "real" computers with their full-sized hardware usb keyboards. And yes, I'm originally from France and I was educated in France, but I just hate spelling and typing accents in French, and I'm just pleasantly surprised that the technology has already reached this level of sophistication on the mobile side of things (and no, I'm not affiliated with XSwift in any way).
Yes, it comes down on who you are. If you're a shareholder, a manufacturer, or a back-seat CEO, Apple has the biggest market. But if you're a consumer or an app developer, Android has the biggest market. It's playing itself out just like it did with Windows and Macs.
No one is saying that Apple is doing anything wrong here. In fact, they're having record profits. And the Android-based manufacturers will probably end up with razor-thin margins, just like the PC manufacturers did. I don't know why you're complaining thought. The Slashdot audience is more aligned with consumers and app developers than it is with shareholders or manufacturers anyway.
I also suggest that the teacher's station be in the back on a raised platform, such that the teacher can easily see all of the screens.
I'd suggest a bank of mirrors slightly inclined on the upper half of the walls in the back of the room. The idea would be to see their computer screen, but still be able to lecture in front of them at the same time.
Question: Can an astronaut wear contacts in space? Would an individual qualify to be an astronaut without 20/20 vision?
Garneau: The answer is yes, you can wear contacts in space. Some astronauts do wear them. And to become an astronaut - if you're going to become a pilot astronaut - you have to have better than 20 over 70 vision distance, and it has to be correctable to 20/20. If you want to become a mission specialist - the other kind of astronaut - your vision requirements are 20 over 200, once again correctable to 20/20. So you don't have to have perfect vision to become an astronaut.
Yes, never trust the HR department for the official requirements to a job description. Their only job is to weed out applicants.
And to all the Tom Cruz-sized little people out there, don't get discouraged -- get yourself some platform shoes and practice drinking Vodka. With a smaller body, you'll be expected to have a higher tolerance for hard liquor. That's really the only requirement of the Russians, having someone they can socialize with, without having to have clean the air filters and having to smell somebody else's vomit until the mission is over.
Google has been wanting those wakelocks included in the mainline for quite a while now. And it was only recently that the issue was reconsidered by Linus and the other maintainers, so that those changes were finally accepted into the mainline.
The front-facing camera of a smart phone or a laptop would need to be realigned every time you'd put them in your car.
But with a camera already fixed in your car, it could be just like taxi-cab confessions. The driver wouldn't have to watch the video. He could just have one-way video chat while he would receive the response through his bluetooth headset (or the speaker phone). And if the other person calling him could read his lips for instance, that would be one way to compensate for the added ambient noise around the driver that normally voice calls tend to have.
Also these days, some cars are getting additional cameras outside the car to see in the back (and sometimes in the front as well). With a system like that, the cost would probably be marginal to hook up those feeds into the video chat system as well. Obviously, those kinds of surveillance systems could eventually be used for all kinds of reasons: car-made porn, insurance, anti-theft devices, state surveillance (both inside and outside your car), parental surveillance, the recording and reporting of drunk drivers driving on the same road as you are, etc.
But the biggest advantage would be with the passengers and the kids. Your passengers would be able to call anyone through it, but hopefully, as the driver of the car, you'd have a kill switch for it on your steering wheel (it would be just like your car stereo, your windows, and your child-lock doors, as a driver, you'd have complete control over those devices, and at home your kids may not listen to you when you tell them to get off the freaking phone, but in your car, you wouldn't even have to ask, you'd just press a button and their communication/video/games would be interrupted (until you'd decide to turn them back on again).
Well, a lot of it is also due...to in past years, having medical schools actively seeking and bringing in foreign and female students, to fill quotas.
That's not the entire story. The main issue is that the American Medical Association is artificially limiting the number of new medical degrees (and therefore the number of seats in Med schools) that are being given out.
Luckily, they haven't been able to prevent foreign Medical Doctors from coming to the United States, studying here, and getting re-certified for the United States, but even that's not helping much. The United States has one of the lowest density of Medical Doctors per thousand people in the Western World, even if you do include all those re-certified foreign Medical Doctors.
For instance, France has twice the density of Medical Doctors per thousand (although, I do realize that's not exactly a fair comparison, since the French government essentially pays for its doctors education, although they do artificially limit and set the Doctor's wages which should drive that number down as well, but unfortunately that's the only comparative figure I can remember among western countries).
Here in the United States, we may be against socialism and we may even be for a free (semi-regulated) market of some kind, but we're essentially letting one single union take our country's healthcare system hostage for its own benefit.
You sound like my brother, he's a Mechanical Engineer and a Material Sciences Engineer, but he can't change a spare tire in an emergency to save his life.
It seems like this is exactly what Apple wants, other companies coming up with their own solutions. This should also be want Slashdot wants. Isn't competition what drives innovation? Where's the innovation if everyone just does what everyone else is doing?
Yes, pray tell. Let the innovation begin. How would you suggest going around this particular invention in question for instance?
a patent on an invention that marks up phone numbers and other types of formatted data in an unstructured document, such as an email, in order to enable users to bring up other programs (such as a dialer app) that process such data.
And here's the real story, where the kid in question has a history of bad behaviour, including racism and the actual suspension was the consequence of a series of incidents, and the kid never used the word cute anyway as originally reported
He's African American, and he called other African American kids "niggers". I don't think that counts as being racist, just being a dick. He said, "she is fine" in a loud suggestive manner about a female staff member (according to a witness). Please note, I'm not defending his behavior, I just don't want it to appear a bigger deal than it really is. And you're right, I almost feel sorry for the Principal. By law, employers have to treat potential incidents of sexual harassment very seriously.
But then, the kid is nine years old!!! That's right, nine years old. If you want to suspend him, suspend him for being disrespectful, or insolent. Don't suspend him for "sexual harassment". And in a way, I'm glad the Principal retired too. There must be consequences for school official blindly enforcing zero tolerance policies. Now if you want to Cover Your Ass, you just can't rely on a zero tolerance policy anymore, and may be this incident will introduce some much needed sanity back into the system (one would hope).
Uh, yeah so there is absolutely NO reason why a trained CIA agent can't pass one. If he fails, then he sucks at his job and needs to be fired before he gets someone killed.
You know the polygraph doesn't work and I know the polygraph doesn't work. But it doesn't matter what you and I both know to be the truth. If the person administering the test doesn't like you (or if one of the higher-ups doesn't like you) and the person giving you the test says that you didn't pass the test, you're done, you're finished, there is no appeals process. That's it, and the same goes if you've already been in the CIA for 20 years. If you lose your clearance because of that, it's over.
This is not just a psychological tool, it's a political tool that ensures that only the friends, the family members, and the people who think like the boss/or say yes to the boss, will be the only ones who are ever able to get the job, and most importantly keep the job, at the CIA. It sets up a strict power hierarchy. It's control mechanism. It sets up a mono-culture of yes-men.
Please read the reports on the AntiPolygraph site I linked to. There are some reports from people who claim to have been from the CIA who say they failed the polygraph test. Of course, take those reports with a grain of salt, for all we know, they could be completely made up, but if nothing else, those couple of reports are very interesting to read.
The usefulness of polygraph tests lies not in the technical aspect, but rather in the psychological aspect.
...you could generate a useful response simply by taping 2 small wires to the tip of each index finger and plugging them into the modem port on a laptop computer and then running a fancy-looking "real-time bar-graph" program on the laptop and allowing them to see part of it it reflected in a window behind you.
Fear, guilt, and ignorance are powerful tools.
You've got a good point.
A variation on the trick you describe is also being used as a successful recruitment technique for Scientology (you've got to try it the next time you see signs on a sidewalk offering a "free psychological test"). And if this technique can help the Church of Scientology recruit upstanding moral members for their ranks and basically turn a Sci-Fi writer's figment of an idea into a really powerful worldwide religion. You've got to wonder and just imagine what it could do for an already powerful, pro-democracy, and pro-freedom, worldwide organization such as the CIA.
It would be truly awesome! I'm getting all excited just thinking about it.
Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
It's possible that only his fiancer had the gmail account, and signed up the daughter just for one round of Holy Bible Trivia (you know, the one where they accumulate the most points to get to Heaven, and if they don't get enough points, they go to Hell. It's a very fun game by the way. Very clean and moral. I'm sure you'd love it.)
Why would you *ever* trust Google with anything "personal?" Google makes its money by *selling* people.
Thank your lucky stars you're just a robot then! You're safe.
Which sort of makes the whole Google-account-for-a-pre-teen-daughter-thing not just bad parenting, but creepy as well...
As a robot, I'm not surprised you'd find this creepy.
If I were a robot too, I'm sure such concepts as procreation and development psychology would elude me as well.
The people they have actually checking those scans have basically no way of verifying their authenticity. Scan your passport and then photoshop it to be full of lies and send that to them. They will be happy and you will be happy.
Do not do that. Do not lie. Do not give them an official reason to shut down your own gmail account in addition to your kid's (or send the black planes after you, and put you into Gitmo, as a Non-American, you know it would be the first place we'd send you. Right?). Stay on the higher moral ground. Send them a copy of your passport, but black out all the information, all the serial numbers, except for your birth year and the specific gmail account you want them to reactivate.
For all we know, passports and id cards could contain very crude validation rules that could be used to double-check their validity. For instance, a specific digit could represent a particular gender, or a small image out of place could represent a specific office/time frame the document was officially issued from, or a birth month, or whatever...
Now, I have no idea if such validation rules exist for passports or national/state ids, but we never know, and I can tell you that they do exist for credit card numbers and US social security numbers (although for US social security numbers, they may only follow a specific pattern for historical reasons, and the thought of validating them a certain way may only have come after the fact).
For a credit card number, this means that even if I collect credit card numbers on order forms before I am able to check them online later during the day, I can usually tell if someone unskilled in the art of fraud gave me a wrong number, whether they did it innocently or not. This can really come in handy sometimes. And of course, online those same validation rules are often used to check credit card numbers before the server goes to the bank to even ask if the transaction is valid.
YOU ARE NOT GONNA GET IT GOOGLE!!! You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.
How about sending them something like this? Or something like that, but instead of blanking out the birth year, you'd leave that year intact, but blank out the month, the day, and pretty much everything else that could possibly be used to identify you?
This could work well too for privacy-related petition drives. Petition your National government for more privacy, and just leave enough information to infer your nationality. And for those of us in the US who'd like to petition our State Senators, just leave your two-letter State abbreviation, and blank out everything else. And if you'd like to show that you're old enough to vote, you could just show them a glimpse of your double-chin, or something.
This would make for some great online petition mosaics too. Of course, it would be super insecure as well. In terms of privacy it would only be slightly better than signing Facebook petitions (or filling out official petitions), so I'm suggesting this as more of a symbolic gesture than anything else.
don't use the same Google+ account for GMail as one does for other services (ie. YouTube).
This is good advice, but it's going to end badly if you do that.
I can't convey the annoyance of having to switch account every time I click on a like button, or go watch a youtube video, or add something to my calendar, or do something else on one of the Google sites.
It's better than it used be, a little bit, but Google is becoming so much more pervasive in everything I do already, it has become a huge annoyance that I would gladly pay ten times over what I'm already paying to have it all go away (And yes, I'm already paying for Google Apps Premier in case anyone was wondering, sadly, Google treats its free ad-supported accounts still way better than the accounts of all its paid customers).
Slashdot Mirror
Normally, I'd say that the parent was being unhelpful, but in this case with the the Scripting Layer 4 Android (SL4A) already having done most of the work for you, it would actually pretty easy to do this. Here are the beginning of their instructions:
Introduction
Part of the SL4A project is to define an API for others to develop new interpreters that SL4A (or any other compatible project) can support. Currently, this standard is for interpreters that can be run as a binary in a separate process. This standard will be extended in the future to also support running JVM based interpreters in process.
The Easy Way is a step-by-step description of how to build an interpreter APK that is compatible with SL4A.
The Way of Samurai describes how to use the interpreter.jar in your own project to interface with SL4A.
The Way of Zen describes the API in detail.
[...]
And yes, I'm aware that the original question mentions SL4A, but says that that it doesn't provide "exhaustive" access to the platform, which triggers the question for me, what access does he want? Just tell me one thing that he wants (please not a fully shopping list), just have him pick one item, and I'll show him how he can add it to the the Scripting Layer for Android himself.
And yes, I do realize that's really not the original question that he was asking, and to that, I'd reply that not everyone in life always get what they want. "Basic" may be at the center of his Universe right now, but it's certainly not the de facto language for everyone these days and it would be presumptuous for him to think that his opinion should override everyone else's opinion on the matter. And it would also be presumptuous to think that a big faceless corporation, with so many developers and so many resources, should cater to *his* every individual needs all because it would be so simple and so easy to do for them. I'm afraid that's not how corporations work. Corporations usually have their own agendas and their own whims to cater to.
One additional point that hasn't been mentioned yet is that the price of an ebook usually has lower printing, inventory, and distribution costs than an actual physical book, a fact which is not usually reflected in its price. And sometimes, the ebook version can be the only copy available if the book is out of print in the real world.
And there is also the possibility that some ebooks help drive the sales of their physical counterparts sometimes. Now, I'm not saying that this happens all the time, but in the case of very high quality books, having the electronic version of it is often not enough, and having a good electronic version can often drive one to track down a copy of the real physical book in question.
Technically, their intent was to fork it. The Chinese government was adamant about not wanting any secret US back-doors in it.
My guess is that they probably did it just like our US Department of Defense. They probably froze it to an older version to try to secure that at least, and then when they finally could deliver something to their bosses, they got yelled at for delivering a version so old, that Google had already published at least half-a-dozen new major versions in the mean time.
Most large companies centrally archive their IMs.
For a while, that's what Microsoft was doing with Apple for the same reason.
I'm an app developer. The Android market is bigger, but far fewer people are willing to part with their money. It's far less profitable.
Yes, it's less profitable, but already a few month ago, some game app companies have started announcing that they're getting more profits from their Android side than their iOS side, when everything else they were doing was identical, so the tide seems to be starting to turn at the very least.
The rate of growth for the Android developer community is shrinking.
I would certainly hope so. It can't keep on growing at a zillion percent forever. It was playing catch up for a while, but now it's leveling off as it's catching up with iOS. And unlike you, it isn't just a feeling I'm having, I can actually point to Android developer meetups in my area that have started surpassing the number of developers from the iOS meetups (although, those Android meetups were started much later than their iOS counterparts)
There are far, far fewer apps for all Android tablets than there are for the iPad. Very few clients of mine are interested in Android. I only recommend Android versions of the apps I build occasionally. It's usually iOS only.
Android tablets, yes. Android phones, that's another story.
Weren't we just talking about all Android developers just a paragraph above? Most are still learning about Android tablet development. Most haven't moved to Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich yet. The Android developer community is still less mature than the iOS community, I'll openly make that concession to you at least, but like I said earlier, I can point to more developers opting for Android when initially being given the choice between iOS or Android. That, I have no doubt in my mind.
And I do see clients that come to Android, that do not even consider iOS a viable option. They're Medical research companies and Medical manufacturers that love the iPad, but that realize iOS will never be open enough to do anything of what they have in mind with it, so they're going with the default choice instead, which is Android. Just don't count on any of those apps appearing as revenue for the Android Market anytime soon, those apps are usually part of a much larger deal where lots of money is exchanged hands, and the Android developers are well compensated, but that money just doesn't flow through any app store or even Google to begin with.
For personal projects, I don't target Android unless it's something I would use myself (I have an Android phone because I like a physical keyboard. I hate the software because it's embarrassingly low quality).
That's weird you would say that. Do you have an original Droid by any chance?
For me, I'm actually typing faster and more accurately in French with my Nexus S (with the X Swift software keyboard) than I can type on any of my "real" computers with their full-sized hardware usb keyboards. And yes, I'm originally from France and I was educated in France, but I just hate spelling and typing accents in French, and I'm just pleasantly surprised that the technology has already reached this level of sophistication on the mobile side of things (and no, I'm not affiliated with XSwift in any way).
I am an Android developer. And I can prove it, if you want me to. I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.
Before that, I was a Nokia developer. Now developing for Nokia, that was difficult!!!
Better prepare yourself for some non-stop seizures, I hear that the end of December is not good for that kind of thing.
Yes, it comes down on who you are. If you're a shareholder, a manufacturer, or a back-seat CEO, Apple has the biggest market. But if you're a consumer or an app developer, Android has the biggest market. It's playing itself out just like it did with Windows and Macs.
No one is saying that Apple is doing anything wrong here. In fact, they're having record profits. And the Android-based manufacturers will probably end up with razor-thin margins, just like the PC manufacturers did. I don't know why you're complaining thought. The Slashdot audience is more aligned with consumers and app developers than it is with shareholders or manufacturers anyway.
I also suggest that the teacher's station be in the back on a raised platform, such that the teacher can easily see all of the screens.
I'd suggest a bank of mirrors slightly inclined on the upper half of the walls in the back of the room. The idea would be to see their computer screen, but still be able to lecture in front of them at the same time.
FYI
To: Mission Specialist Marc Garneau
Question: Can an astronaut wear contacts in space? Would an individual qualify to be an astronaut without 20/20 vision?
Garneau: The answer is yes, you can wear contacts in space. Some astronauts do wear them. And to become an astronaut - if you're going to become a pilot astronaut - you have to have better than 20 over 70 vision distance, and it has to be correctable to 20/20. If you want to become a mission specialist - the other kind of astronaut - your vision requirements are 20 over 200, once again correctable to 20/20. So you don't have to have perfect vision to become an astronaut.
Yes, never trust the HR department for the official requirements to a job description. Their only job is to weed out applicants.
And to all the Tom Cruz-sized little people out there, don't get discouraged -- get yourself some platform shoes and practice drinking Vodka. With a smaller body, you'll be expected to have a higher tolerance for hard liquor. That's really the only requirement of the Russians, having someone they can socialize with, without having to have clean the air filters and having to smell somebody else's vomit until the mission is over.
Experts say that this will strengthen Microsoft's hand in collecting patent fees on Android.
I wonder who those experts were?
Google has been wanting those wakelocks included in the mainline for quite a while now. And it was only recently that the issue was reconsidered by Linus and the other maintainers, so that those changes were finally accepted into the mainline.
On a more recent note, RIM has upped its game with regards to Android and its new Android player. I wouldn't count them out just yet.
The front-facing camera of a smart phone or a laptop would need to be realigned every time you'd put them in your car.
But with a camera already fixed in your car, it could be just like taxi-cab confessions. The driver wouldn't have to watch the video. He could just have one-way video chat while he would receive the response through his bluetooth headset (or the speaker phone). And if the other person calling him could read his lips for instance, that would be one way to compensate for the added ambient noise around the driver that normally voice calls tend to have.
Also these days, some cars are getting additional cameras outside the car to see in the back (and sometimes in the front as well). With a system like that, the cost would probably be marginal to hook up those feeds into the video chat system as well. Obviously, those kinds of surveillance systems could eventually be used for all kinds of reasons: car-made porn, insurance, anti-theft devices, state surveillance (both inside and outside your car), parental surveillance, the recording and reporting of drunk drivers driving on the same road as you are, etc.
But the biggest advantage would be with the passengers and the kids. Your passengers would be able to call anyone through it, but hopefully, as the driver of the car, you'd have a kill switch for it on your steering wheel (it would be just like your car stereo, your windows, and your child-lock doors, as a driver, you'd have complete control over those devices, and at home your kids may not listen to you when you tell them to get off the freaking phone, but in your car, you wouldn't even have to ask, you'd just press a button and their communication/video/games would be interrupted (until you'd decide to turn them back on again).
Well, a lot of it is also due...to in past years, having medical schools actively seeking and bringing in foreign and female students, to fill quotas.
That's not the entire story. The main issue is that the American Medical Association is artificially limiting the number of new medical degrees (and therefore the number of seats in Med schools) that are being given out.
Luckily, they haven't been able to prevent foreign Medical Doctors from coming to the United States, studying here, and getting re-certified for the United States, but even that's not helping much. The United States has one of the lowest density of Medical Doctors per thousand people in the Western World, even if you do include all those re-certified foreign Medical Doctors.
For instance, France has twice the density of Medical Doctors per thousand (although, I do realize that's not exactly a fair comparison, since the French government essentially pays for its doctors education, although they do artificially limit and set the Doctor's wages which should drive that number down as well, but unfortunately that's the only comparative figure I can remember among western countries).
Here in the United States, we may be against socialism and we may even be for a free (semi-regulated) market of some kind, but we're essentially letting one single union take our country's healthcare system hostage for its own benefit.
You sound like my brother, he's a Mechanical Engineer and a Material Sciences Engineer, but he can't change a spare tire in an emergency to save his life.
It seems like this is exactly what Apple wants, other companies coming up with their own solutions. This should also be want Slashdot wants. Isn't competition what drives innovation? Where's the innovation if everyone just does what everyone else is doing?
Yes, pray tell. Let the innovation begin. How would you suggest going around this particular invention in question for instance?
a patent on an invention that marks up phone numbers and other types of formatted data in an unstructured document, such as an email, in order to enable users to bring up other programs (such as a dialer app) that process such data.
And here's the real story, where the kid in question has a history of bad behaviour, including racism and the actual suspension was the consequence of a series of incidents, and the kid never used the word cute anyway as originally reported
He's African American, and he called other African American kids "niggers". I don't think that counts as being racist, just being a dick. He said, "she is fine" in a loud suggestive manner about a female staff member (according to a witness). Please note, I'm not defending his behavior, I just don't want it to appear a bigger deal than it really is. And you're right, I almost feel sorry for the Principal. By law, employers have to treat potential incidents of sexual harassment very seriously.
But then, the kid is nine years old!!! That's right, nine years old. If you want to suspend him, suspend him for being disrespectful, or insolent. Don't suspend him for "sexual harassment". And in a way, I'm glad the Principal retired too. There must be consequences for school official blindly enforcing zero tolerance policies. Now if you want to Cover Your Ass, you just can't rely on a zero tolerance policy anymore, and may be this incident will introduce some much needed sanity back into the system (one would hope).
Uh, yeah so there is absolutely NO reason why a trained CIA agent can't pass one. If he fails, then he sucks at his job and needs to be fired before he gets someone killed.
You know the polygraph doesn't work and I know the polygraph doesn't work. But it doesn't matter what you and I both know to be the truth. If the person administering the test doesn't like you (or if one of the higher-ups doesn't like you) and the person giving you the test says that you didn't pass the test, you're done, you're finished, there is no appeals process. That's it, and the same goes if you've already been in the CIA for 20 years. If you lose your clearance because of that, it's over.
This is not just a psychological tool, it's a political tool that ensures that only the friends, the family members, and the people who think like the boss/or say yes to the boss, will be the only ones who are ever able to get the job, and most importantly keep the job, at the CIA. It sets up a strict power hierarchy. It's control mechanism. It sets up a mono-culture of yes-men.
Please read the reports on the AntiPolygraph site I linked to. There are some reports from people who claim to have been from the CIA who say they failed the polygraph test. Of course, take those reports with a grain of salt, for all we know, they could be completely made up, but if nothing else, those couple of reports are very interesting to read.
The usefulness of polygraph tests lies not in the technical aspect, but rather in the psychological aspect.
Fear, guilt, and ignorance are powerful tools.
You've got a good point.
A variation on the trick you describe is also being used as a successful recruitment technique for Scientology (you've got to try it the next time you see signs on a sidewalk offering a "free psychological test"). And if this technique can help the Church of Scientology recruit upstanding moral members for their ranks and basically turn a Sci-Fi writer's figment of an idea into a really powerful worldwide religion. You've got to wonder and just imagine what it could do for an already powerful, pro-democracy, and pro-freedom, worldwide organization such as the CIA.
It would be truly awesome! I'm getting all excited just thinking about it.
Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
It's possible that only his fiancer had the gmail account, and signed up the daughter just for one round of Holy Bible Trivia (you know, the one where they accumulate the most points to get to Heaven, and if they don't get enough points, they go to Hell. It's a very fun game by the way. Very clean and moral. I'm sure you'd love it.)
Why would you *ever* trust Google with anything "personal?" Google makes its money by *selling* people.
Thank your lucky stars you're just a robot then! You're safe.
Which sort of makes the whole Google-account-for-a-pre-teen-daughter-thing not just bad parenting, but creepy as well...
As a robot, I'm not surprised you'd find this creepy.
If I were a robot too, I'm sure such concepts as procreation and development psychology would elude me as well.
The people they have actually checking those scans have basically no way of verifying their authenticity. Scan your passport and then photoshop it to be full of lies and send that to them. They will be happy and you will be happy.
Do not do that. Do not lie. Do not give them an official reason to shut down your own gmail account in addition to your kid's (or send the black planes after you, and put you into Gitmo, as a Non-American, you know it would be the first place we'd send you. Right?). Stay on the higher moral ground. Send them a copy of your passport, but black out all the information, all the serial numbers, except for your birth year and the specific gmail account you want them to reactivate.
For all we know, passports and id cards could contain very crude validation rules that could be used to double-check their validity. For instance, a specific digit could represent a particular gender, or a small image out of place could represent a specific office/time frame the document was officially issued from, or a birth month, or whatever...
Now, I have no idea if such validation rules exist for passports or national/state ids, but we never know, and I can tell you that they do exist for credit card numbers and US social security numbers (although for US social security numbers, they may only follow a specific pattern for historical reasons, and the thought of validating them a certain way may only have come after the fact).
For a credit card number, this means that even if I collect credit card numbers on order forms before I am able to check them online later during the day, I can usually tell if someone unskilled in the art of fraud gave me a wrong number, whether they did it innocently or not. This can really come in handy sometimes. And of course, online those same validation rules are often used to check credit card numbers before the server goes to the bank to even ask if the transaction is valid.
YOU ARE NOT GONNA GET IT GOOGLE!!! You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.
How about sending them something like this? Or something like that, but instead of blanking out the birth year, you'd leave that year intact, but blank out the month, the day, and pretty much everything else that could possibly be used to identify you?
This could work well too for privacy-related petition drives. Petition your National government for more privacy, and just leave enough information to infer your nationality. And for those of us in the US who'd like to petition our State Senators, just leave your two-letter State abbreviation, and blank out everything else. And if you'd like to show that you're old enough to vote, you could just show them a glimpse of your double-chin, or something.
This would make for some great online petition mosaics too. Of course, it would be super insecure as well. In terms of privacy it would only be slightly better than signing Facebook petitions (or filling out official petitions), so I'm suggesting this as more of a symbolic gesture than anything else.
don't use the same Google+ account for GMail as one does for other services (ie. YouTube).
This is good advice, but it's going to end badly if you do that.
I can't convey the annoyance of having to switch account every time I click on a like button, or go watch a youtube video, or add something to my calendar, or do something else on one of the Google sites.
It's better than it used be, a little bit, but Google is becoming so much more pervasive in everything I do already, it has become a huge annoyance that I would gladly pay ten times over what I'm already paying to have it all go away (And yes, I'm already paying for Google Apps Premier in case anyone was wondering, sadly, Google treats its free ad-supported accounts still way better than the accounts of all its paid customers).