Why doesn't the US revert to paper ballots? We just held a federal election in Canada, and things worked just fine with a good old fashioned pencil and a small paper ballot (well, actually more like thin card). It took us a matter of hours to successfully decide the fate of the country for the next X years without the need for millions of dollars worth of mysterious electronic machinery.
The actual list is more akin to...
Win 95
Win 98
Win 2000
Win ME
Win XP
Vista
Win 7
(although I had to overlook Windows Server 2003 and 2008 - not sure how MS perceives them internally)
Forget the "Windows 1.0," to "3.X" stuff - they were merely crippled GUI shells.
Let's imagine an alternate universe in which the car was never invented. Instead, personal ownership of horses is at an all time high. Nearly everyone owns one (or two), and suburbia is filled with front-attached two or three horse stables. There's a feed store on most major corners. Unfortunately, there's trouble in this imaginary equine paradise. America has long since outstripped its ability to feed the 300 million horses that roam the highways and byways. Instead, the nation increasingly turns to foreign sources for feed. Initially, prices are low, but eventually America finds itself competing with developing nations. The price of oats and horse licks shoots into the stratosphere. Horse dealers and tack suppliers are in a panic. The American way of life is in jeopardy.
The major horse breeding companies embark on ambitious programs to genetically engineer exotic horses that eat less feed, or that are capable of eating unusual waste byproducts. They eventually hit upon a magical recipe that requires a complicated and expensive manufacturing process. Because it's so expensive (and because the American way of life is at stake) they invest billions of dollars in R&D and politicians spread the word about how this alternative feed will save the great nation from catastrophe and reliance on foreign grains....
Sounds insane, doesn't it? The research money would be far better spent investing in steam trains or even pie-in-the-sky revolutionary devices such as the automobile, but everyone is fixated on the horse feed shortage and cannot see beyond the current world with its suburban horse problems.
GamePro recently reported that "In the April to June period this year there were about half [the DS game sales] of the same period last year." This huge drop is difficult to explain, even with a maturing product. Nintendo filed suit against five distributors of the R4 flash cart in Japan this the summer in an attempt to slow piracy, but its impossible to know just how many pirate cards have been imported from China.
One of the driving forces behind the development of the DSi is the rampant piracy in the DS market. You can buy a flash card and 1GB microSD card that'll run copied ROMs for less than $20 these days. I fully expect Nintendo has incorporated some fairly aggressive tech to prevent copying. That's not a bad thing, except that it throws up yet another roadblock for homebrewers. The DS is a capable, affordable and widespread platform that would benefit tremendously from independent development, yet there's no way that Nintendo is every going to let that happen without extracting a pound of flesh through their online download service.
We're officially in a new era in which manufacturers see it as their duty to lock down their portable computers - I hope that the Pandora is a success, although I fear we'll have to wait a few years before a manufacturer comes along and blows the market open with a tiny box that can run third party code without obstruction
I'm comfortable with the definition of 'public domain' as it pertains to the Copyright Act of Canada, thanks. I agree that copyright of the national anthem is in the public domain, which generally means that anyone can use it for commercial or private purposes. However, you're overlooking the notion that trademarks can also fall under the public domain.
There is no doubt that the IOC is free to trademark an inane phrase that they wish to associate with the games, much like McDonald's has co-opted "I'm lovin' it." However, in this instance the IOC has trademarked "with glowing hearts" solely because of its strong association with our national anthem. Strictly speaking, this is a legal application of the mark. However, one could make an argument that the mark is invalid because it is what the act terms as "deceptively misdescriptive" (in this case, it's virtually meaningless, actually). From a legislative perspective, there is a list of prohibited marks related to government and royal marks. The text of the national anthem does not fall under this category, but I will make an argument to my MP that it should.
The most appropriate response to the IOC's increasing reach and commercialism is to make an effort to tune out the Olympics (TM). There are a great many amateur meets that happen throughout the world on a regular basis, and they're always in need of volunteers and spectators. If you can't do without a regular fix of Olympic (TM) patriotism, steer clear of the Olympic-branded (TM) merchandise and take a few minutes out of your life to let major sponsors of The Games( TM) know that you're avoiding their products because of the way the IOC has corrupted amateur sport (TM).
This is one instance where money really talks. A sharp downturn in funding and public opinion would work wonders.
I'm Canadian, so I'm going to take 10 minutes following the upcoming federal election to write a letter to my member of parliament complaining about the IOC's misappropriation of lines from our national anthem. The work is in the public domain, and it is quite obvious that the organizers of the Vancouver games are attempting to exploit its patriotic meaning for inappropriate commercial gain.
In other words, the outcome of the last few US Presidential elections was basically random.;) I'm always bemused by the US political system (disclosure: I'm not American), because voters are forced into impossibly broad categories. Either you're a dope-smoking, liberal hippie or your a tightly-wound god-fearing conservative. There's a complete absence of middle ground (barring a couple of fringe political parties that no one takes seriously). I would have a hard time getting up the willpower to vote on election day with so little real choice.
Ahh. Thanks for the clarification. I had no idea that they were planning to revert back to VHF after the switchover (I was under the impression that the idea was to vacate that portion of the spectrum for other purposes). You don't necessarily require a different antenna for VHF/UHF - As an example, ChannelMaster makes a variety of dual-band devices.
You didn't read TFA, did 'ya?:) The problem is that the digital transmission footprint is smaller. That means that some suburban viewers (or viewers in obstructed areas) may find themselves unable to receive OTA broadcasts without expensive outdoor antennas. For people on a limited budget (ie: the kind of person you might find living in a trailer in the countryside), this will cause problems. However... there ain't nuttin ta stop y'all from trying out the newfangled digeetal thingy before the anylog tranmishun goes dark.
I have a surprisingly sleek Cambridge Z88 notepad from 1988 that I still use occasionally. It has an absolutely silent rubber keyboard with sculpted keys and a rather decent text editor built in. Total time to resume is around half a second and it runs 20 hours on 4 AA batteries.
From the Merriam Webster dictionary: Manage (transitive verb)... to exercise executive, administrative, and supervisory direction of [manage a business].
If a manager isn't providing leadership, you're in trouble.
I doubt Steve Jobs could code "Hello World" for an iPod if his life depended on it. That doesn't make him a bad manager. Quite the reverse, in fact. I've known too many senior managers who enjoy rolling their sleeves up and getting their hands dirty on the technological side when they should be managing their team instead. Management requires championing your team and ensuring they have the resources (both people and technology) to do the task at hand. It requires foresight and insight into the bigger picture. A manager functions as a liaison between other business units and the team, and should also be capable of strong leadership when things go wrong.
From a technical perspective, a successful manager needs to know enough to recognize which team members know what the hell they're talking about, and needs to rely on their experience and technical knowledge for guidance.
Dear Bill and Jerry: It's not enough to bumble around and admit you made mistakes, especially in such a high profile campaign. The *only* way that this ad series could turn things around is if they get to the end and reveal that MS has been working on a rock-solid replacement, and that it's available immediately. That, of course, is an impossibility. At best, we'll get vague promises that something better is coming soon (either that, or Seinfeld will sport a Tux t-shirt in the final sequence).
Microsoft is certainly spending a fortune in an attempt to reverse user opinion on Vista. I manage ad buys for a major tech site, and they dramatically outbid everyone - including Apple's back-to-school campaign - to make sure that their Mojave Project video ads anchored the site for almost a month. Interestingly, the campaign had a pretty strong response rate throughout its run - people really wanted to see what MS was up to. It surprised me that a bunch of hardcore geeks would care, actually.
*You do know that flat panel does not equal dtv, right? Or is that what Walmart told you?* Okay, in a nutshell so you understand...
There are issues with what you term "airwave transmitted video," (OTA). Current NTSC OTA viewers in fringe areas may find that things aren't as simple as purchasing a converter box - ATSC 8VSB is far less forgiving with marginal signals and DTV coverage appears to favor major metro areas. IOTA viewers in the deep suburbs may very well require a good roof-mounted antenna (Google Gray-Hoverman for an excellent DIY design) and rural viewers may find slim pickings compared to the "good ol' analog days."
But if those Walmart shoppers have cable or satellite, they should be OK past the cutoff. I'll be keeping my analog TV for years to come - it's connected to a satellite box that's capable of downsampling HD to standard def and my family doesn't watch television enough to justify a flat panel.
Yes, mplayer gets my vote as an excellent plug-in. However, readers shouldn't have to download software to view content. It's a problem that I run into every day while maintaining a popular site - we've settled on embedded flash players because the vast majority of typical visitors can use it, and because we can serve it from our machines. It's not an ideal solution, but it ensures that 95% of people can actually use our site without any manual intervention. Most of the remaining 5% are tux-heads, so they don't have problems. That leaves only a tiny minority who are surfing using ancient 3com Audreys or off-brand cell phones.
I'm a big fan of the various Wimpy tools... http://www.wimpyplayer.com/ (I'm sure someone around here is going to start yelping about open source options, but I tried a handful and kept running into compatibility quirks). Their products cost between $20 and $40 (per site license, as I recall) and there are demo version of all of their tools on the site - you can try yourself before committing.
I like blip.tv or vimeo. Both offer significantly higher quality than YouTube. The only hassle with blip is that you have to pay to get "premium" encoding, although the free version works just fine if you're patient enough to wait a few hours.
However, it may make more sense to host the file yourself (you can use something like Amazon's AWS to serve gigabytes of content for hardly anything) using any of a number of excellent embedded video viewers. This gives you absolute control over your media, which is a surprisingly valuable commodity. If your animation turns out to be popular, your site could see hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of visits. That can easily add up to tens of thousands of dollars of revenue. On the other hand, if you upload your film to YouTube, you're going to hand over that advertising revenue to Google and walk away empty handed. Honestly, "social media" sites are a fool's game - You do all the hard work, someone else profits.
Michael Geist is a shining example of why academics are critically important in society - and why governments detest them. His running analysis of bill C-61 has been eloquent, straightforward and polite. He has earned a loyal following be clearly explaining what the flaws of the legislation are and how they will impact Canadians in everyday use (for example, how the Government is touting the clauses that grant timeshifting and device shifting rights while glossing over the fact that other parts of the legislation effectively neuter consumer rights where DRM is involved).
Dr. Geist's blog posts and editorials in several major Canadian newspapers encouraged me to write to several members of parliament after a lifetime of political apathy. More importantly, I've done my best to explain the legislation's flaws to others, too, in the hope that they will take action. Several have, also for the first time.
There are US Border security posts in major Canadian airports, and I've always wondered how the law works in those situations. The American DHS officers are working in Canada, and therefore fall under Canadian law. So do the Americans have a right to confiscate a laptop while I'm undergoing a pre-clearance inspection in Toronto? I suspect not.
At any rate, I have a notebook that is used exclusively for traveling. It has a generic set of apps installed, no local email, and no files of consequence stored on the local hard drive - I VPN to a remote server to access company documents and files. My machine is expendable.
I suspect Apple will sue if Open Tech uses an Mac trademarks or alludes to Apple's trade dress in any way. There's no way that Open Tech will be able to defend themselves - things will get very expensive, very quickly. I doubt Apple would risk playing the EULA card in case the judge finds against them and finds it reasonable for Open Tech to use Apple software on whatever bloody hardware they wish. If that was to occur, Apple would find themselves starring in their very own version of "Attack of the Clones."
Apple will wait quietly to see what ammunition Open Tech provides them. I can't imagine the new company will be able to successfully advertise without alluding to Mac, Apple, or OS X. Apple is the patient shark, and sooner or later the surfer will dangle a limb over the edge of the board.
Every time I see a situation like this, I have to wonder what would happen if an "indispensable" person got hit by a bus. It strikes me that Childs was using his absolute control of the network as a way to put the fear of god in others within the department while attaining more prestige and autonomy than he deserved. The fact that Childs locked everyone out of the system after apparently receiving a poor job assessment backs that up. Sooner or later, the IT department had to take action to strip his stranglehold of the network, especially if he was on the verge of burnout or increasingly difficult to deal with.
I suspect that no one had the interpersonal wherewithal to figure out how to approach him in a non-confrontational manner. The best approach would have been to find someone who Childs respected who could share the load and provide backup and support while the organization attempted to deal with an overly possessive employee who is behaving irrationally.
Slashdot Mirror
Why doesn't the US revert to paper ballots? We just held a federal election in Canada, and things worked just fine with a good old fashioned pencil and a small paper ballot (well, actually more like thin card). It took us a matter of hours to successfully decide the fate of the country for the next X years without the need for millions of dollars worth of mysterious electronic machinery.
I'm declaring today "Anti Microsoft Day." There. We're even.
The actual list is more akin to... Win 95 Win 98 Win 2000 Win ME Win XP Vista Win 7 (although I had to overlook Windows Server 2003 and 2008 - not sure how MS perceives them internally) Forget the "Windows 1.0," to "3.X" stuff - they were merely crippled GUI shells.
Let's imagine an alternate universe in which the car was never invented. Instead, personal ownership of horses is at an all time high. Nearly everyone owns one (or two), and suburbia is filled with front-attached two or three horse stables. There's a feed store on most major corners. Unfortunately, there's trouble in this imaginary equine paradise. America has long since outstripped its ability to feed the 300 million horses that roam the highways and byways. Instead, the nation increasingly turns to foreign sources for feed. Initially, prices are low, but eventually America finds itself competing with developing nations. The price of oats and horse licks shoots into the stratosphere. Horse dealers and tack suppliers are in a panic. The American way of life is in jeopardy.
The major horse breeding companies embark on ambitious programs to genetically engineer exotic horses that eat less feed, or that are capable of eating unusual waste byproducts. They eventually hit upon a magical recipe that requires a complicated and expensive manufacturing process. Because it's so expensive (and because the American way of life is at stake) they invest billions of dollars in R&D and politicians spread the word about how this alternative feed will save the great nation from catastrophe and reliance on foreign grains....
Sounds insane, doesn't it? The research money would be far better spent investing in steam trains or even pie-in-the-sky revolutionary devices such as the automobile, but everyone is fixated on the horse feed shortage and cannot see beyond the current world with its suburban horse problems.
GamePro recently reported that "In the April to June period this year there were about half [the DS game sales] of the same period last year." This huge drop is difficult to explain, even with a maturing product. Nintendo filed suit against five distributors of the R4 flash cart in Japan this the summer in an attempt to slow piracy, but its impossible to know just how many pirate cards have been imported from China.
One of the driving forces behind the development of the DSi is the rampant piracy in the DS market. You can buy a flash card and 1GB microSD card that'll run copied ROMs for less than $20 these days. I fully expect Nintendo has incorporated some fairly aggressive tech to prevent copying. That's not a bad thing, except that it throws up yet another roadblock for homebrewers. The DS is a capable, affordable and widespread platform that would benefit tremendously from independent development, yet there's no way that Nintendo is every going to let that happen without extracting a pound of flesh through their online download service.
We're officially in a new era in which manufacturers see it as their duty to lock down their portable computers - I hope that the Pandora is a success, although I fear we'll have to wait a few years before a manufacturer comes along and blows the market open with a tiny box that can run third party code without obstruction
I'm comfortable with the definition of 'public domain' as it pertains to the Copyright Act of Canada, thanks. I agree that copyright of the national anthem is in the public domain, which generally means that anyone can use it for commercial or private purposes. However, you're overlooking the notion that trademarks can also fall under the public domain.
There is no doubt that the IOC is free to trademark an inane phrase that they wish to associate with the games, much like McDonald's has co-opted "I'm lovin' it." However, in this instance the IOC has trademarked "with glowing hearts" solely because of its strong association with our national anthem. Strictly speaking, this is a legal application of the mark. However, one could make an argument that the mark is invalid because it is what the act terms as "deceptively misdescriptive" (in this case, it's virtually meaningless, actually). From a legislative perspective, there is a list of prohibited marks related to government and royal marks. The text of the national anthem does not fall under this category, but I will make an argument to my MP that it should.
The most appropriate response to the IOC's increasing reach and commercialism is to make an effort to tune out the Olympics (TM). There are a great many amateur meets that happen throughout the world on a regular basis, and they're always in need of volunteers and spectators. If you can't do without a regular fix of Olympic (TM) patriotism, steer clear of the Olympic-branded (TM) merchandise and take a few minutes out of your life to let major sponsors of The Games( TM) know that you're avoiding their products because of the way the IOC has corrupted amateur sport (TM).
This is one instance where money really talks. A sharp downturn in funding and public opinion would work wonders.
I'm Canadian, so I'm going to take 10 minutes following the upcoming federal election to write a letter to my member of parliament complaining about the IOC's misappropriation of lines from our national anthem. The work is in the public domain, and it is quite obvious that the organizers of the Vancouver games are attempting to exploit its patriotic meaning for inappropriate commercial gain.
In other words, the outcome of the last few US Presidential elections was basically random. ;) I'm always bemused by the US political system (disclosure: I'm not American), because voters are forced into impossibly broad categories. Either you're a dope-smoking, liberal hippie or your a tightly-wound god-fearing conservative. There's a complete absence of middle ground (barring a couple of fringe political parties that no one takes seriously). I would have a hard time getting up the willpower to vote on election day with so little real choice.
Ahh. Thanks for the clarification. I had no idea that they were planning to revert back to VHF after the switchover (I was under the impression that the idea was to vacate that portion of the spectrum for other purposes). You don't necessarily require a different antenna for VHF/UHF - As an example, ChannelMaster makes a variety of dual-band devices.
You didn't read TFA, did 'ya? :) The problem is that the digital transmission footprint is smaller. That means that some suburban viewers (or viewers in obstructed areas) may find themselves unable to receive OTA broadcasts without expensive outdoor antennas. For people on a limited budget (ie: the kind of person you might find living in a trailer in the countryside), this will cause problems. However... there ain't nuttin ta stop y'all from trying out the newfangled digeetal thingy before the anylog tranmishun goes dark.
I have a surprisingly sleek Cambridge Z88 notepad from 1988 that I still use occasionally. It has an absolutely silent rubber keyboard with sculpted keys and a rather decent text editor built in. Total time to resume is around half a second and it runs 20 hours on 4 AA batteries.
From the Merriam Webster dictionary: Manage (transitive verb) ... to exercise executive, administrative, and supervisory direction of [manage a business].
If a manager isn't providing leadership, you're in trouble.
I doubt Steve Jobs could code "Hello World" for an iPod if his life depended on it. That doesn't make him a bad manager. Quite the reverse, in fact. I've known too many senior managers who enjoy rolling their sleeves up and getting their hands dirty on the technological side when they should be managing their team instead. Management requires championing your team and ensuring they have the resources (both people and technology) to do the task at hand. It requires foresight and insight into the bigger picture. A manager functions as a liaison between other business units and the team, and should also be capable of strong leadership when things go wrong.
From a technical perspective, a successful manager needs to know enough to recognize which team members know what the hell they're talking about, and needs to rely on their experience and technical knowledge for guidance.
Dear Bill and Jerry: It's not enough to bumble around and admit you made mistakes, especially in such a high profile campaign. The *only* way that this ad series could turn things around is if they get to the end and reveal that MS has been working on a rock-solid replacement, and that it's available immediately. That, of course, is an impossibility. At best, we'll get vague promises that something better is coming soon (either that, or Seinfeld will sport a Tux t-shirt in the final sequence).
Microsoft is certainly spending a fortune in an attempt to reverse user opinion on Vista. I manage ad buys for a major tech site, and they dramatically outbid everyone - including Apple's back-to-school campaign - to make sure that their Mojave Project video ads anchored the site for almost a month. Interestingly, the campaign had a pretty strong response rate throughout its run - people really wanted to see what MS was up to. It surprised me that a bunch of hardcore geeks would care, actually.
*You do know that flat panel does not equal dtv, right? Or is that what Walmart told you?* Okay, in a nutshell so you understand...
There are issues with what you term "airwave transmitted video," (OTA). Current NTSC OTA viewers in fringe areas may find that things aren't as simple as purchasing a converter box - ATSC 8VSB is far less forgiving with marginal signals and DTV coverage appears to favor major metro areas. IOTA viewers in the deep suburbs may very well require a good roof-mounted antenna (Google Gray-Hoverman for an excellent DIY design) and rural viewers may find slim pickings compared to the "good ol' analog days."
But if those Walmart shoppers have cable or satellite, they should be OK past the cutoff. I'll be keeping my analog TV for years to come - it's connected to a satellite box that's capable of downsampling HD to standard def and my family doesn't watch television enough to justify a flat panel.
Yes, mplayer gets my vote as an excellent plug-in. However, readers shouldn't have to download software to view content. It's a problem that I run into every day while maintaining a popular site - we've settled on embedded flash players because the vast majority of typical visitors can use it, and because we can serve it from our machines. It's not an ideal solution, but it ensures that 95% of people can actually use our site without any manual intervention. Most of the remaining 5% are tux-heads, so they don't have problems. That leaves only a tiny minority who are surfing using ancient 3com Audreys or off-brand cell phones.
I'm a big fan of the various Wimpy tools... http://www.wimpyplayer.com/ (I'm sure someone around here is going to start yelping about open source options, but I tried a handful and kept running into compatibility quirks). Their products cost between $20 and $40 (per site license, as I recall) and there are demo version of all of their tools on the site - you can try yourself before committing.
I like blip.tv or vimeo. Both offer significantly higher quality than YouTube. The only hassle with blip is that you have to pay to get "premium" encoding, although the free version works just fine if you're patient enough to wait a few hours.
However, it may make more sense to host the file yourself (you can use something like Amazon's AWS to serve gigabytes of content for hardly anything) using any of a number of excellent embedded video viewers. This gives you absolute control over your media, which is a surprisingly valuable commodity. If your animation turns out to be popular, your site could see hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of visits. That can easily add up to tens of thousands of dollars of revenue. On the other hand, if you upload your film to YouTube, you're going to hand over that advertising revenue to Google and walk away empty handed. Honestly, "social media" sites are a fool's game - You do all the hard work, someone else profits.
Michael Geist is a shining example of why academics are critically important in society - and why governments detest them. His running analysis of bill C-61 has been eloquent, straightforward and polite. He has earned a loyal following be clearly explaining what the flaws of the legislation are and how they will impact Canadians in everyday use (for example, how the Government is touting the clauses that grant timeshifting and device shifting rights while glossing over the fact that other parts of the legislation effectively neuter consumer rights where DRM is involved).
Dr. Geist's blog posts and editorials in several major Canadian newspapers encouraged me to write to several members of parliament after a lifetime of political apathy. More importantly, I've done my best to explain the legislation's flaws to others, too, in the hope that they will take action. Several have, also for the first time.
One could also argue that the American invasion of Iraq has jeopardized the Space Station even more.
There are US Border security posts in major Canadian airports, and I've always wondered how the law works in those situations. The American DHS officers are working in Canada, and therefore fall under Canadian law. So do the Americans have a right to confiscate a laptop while I'm undergoing a pre-clearance inspection in Toronto? I suspect not.
At any rate, I have a notebook that is used exclusively for traveling. It has a generic set of apps installed, no local email, and no files of consequence stored on the local hard drive - I VPN to a remote server to access company documents and files. My machine is expendable.
I suspect Apple will sue if Open Tech uses an Mac trademarks or alludes to Apple's trade dress in any way. There's no way that Open Tech will be able to defend themselves - things will get very expensive, very quickly. I doubt Apple would risk playing the EULA card in case the judge finds against them and finds it reasonable for Open Tech to use Apple software on whatever bloody hardware they wish. If that was to occur, Apple would find themselves starring in their very own version of "Attack of the Clones."
Apple will wait quietly to see what ammunition Open Tech provides them. I can't imagine the new company will be able to successfully advertise without alluding to Mac, Apple, or OS X. Apple is the patient shark, and sooner or later the surfer will dangle a limb over the edge of the board.
Every time I see a situation like this, I have to wonder what would happen if an "indispensable" person got hit by a bus. It strikes me that Childs was using his absolute control of the network as a way to put the fear of god in others within the department while attaining more prestige and autonomy than he deserved. The fact that Childs locked everyone out of the system after apparently receiving a poor job assessment backs that up. Sooner or later, the IT department had to take action to strip his stranglehold of the network, especially if he was on the verge of burnout or increasingly difficult to deal with.
I suspect that no one had the interpersonal wherewithal to figure out how to approach him in a non-confrontational manner. The best approach would have been to find someone who Childs respected who could share the load and provide backup and support while the organization attempted to deal with an overly possessive employee who is behaving irrationally.