I find it annoying there both the/. headline and the original article's headline focus on MacOS X when the article is clearly about OS's & interfaces in general (though brought up in context of MacOS X.) It would have been more honestly headlined as "Former MacOS developer wishes OS's would fade into background".
Quantum QuickView. License it, pop it in your labeled box and you've got yourself a product. Guts supplied by the same folks that supply TiVo & Replay.
Why Quantum? The more drives they sell the better for them. It's in their interest to see this market take off and if providing a reference deseign is what it takes that's nothing new in the industry. Besides, they want to be the folks in this potentially enormous market.
OK - I gotta be cautious here 'cause I don't want to get a buddy in trouble...
One of the large hardware manufacturers is working on exactly this. Linux-based it's a framework for other companies to license and customize. Their goal is to supply a reference implementation of the base system which of course takes advantage of their hardware.
Presumably consumer-products companies coming late in the game to "digital-VCR's" will be happy to license this, do some customizing (either in-house or contracted with the developer) and then ship their own branded solutions.
What's interesting about this for the/. community is just how much of this turns out to be really specialized. From kernel modifications to optimized codecs to specially designed file-systems much of this can't be off-the-shelf for price/performance reasons. Apparently they're not terribly concerned about the home-brew market feeling that it'll just be cheaper to buy a dedicated box then retrofitting other hardware, attempting to get appropriate listings, maintaining the hw/sw, etc.
Of course I'm sure they're willing to sell their own industry-generic raw hardware to anyone, it's just the package that they're holding out for big fees.
Frankly even though this topic comes up again & again I think they're probably right. Sure my PC CD-player plays music fine but I prefer to have one in my livingroom dedicated to the audio system. Same with the DVD player, while it plays fine on the box & 21" monitor I've got one in the lvingroom 'cause it's better suited / more convenient there.
I expect for many of us a TiVo-type consumer box will be far more popular then a homebuilt. It's not like building your own computer 'cause the economics aren't likely to be as sweet and it'll be difficult to get source-material (the listings.)
Different but related topic:
What I *do* think would be hot would be custom-program-selection services where one could subscribe and get a selection of program-record-instructions emailed to my TV-box. Rather then it randomly recording stuff it thinks I *might* like or my explicitly setting the recording choices a third option of subscribing to a service (sushi-cooking@asianfood.com or st-nextgen-sans-wesley@stgeek.com) would be interesting.
Of course for this to work we'd need some sort of TV-listings-XML...
Er - It's been availiable in MS Internet Explorer for the Mac for a coupla years...
Generally it's used to point ftp to a real FTP client (Interarchie being popular) and afs to an AFS client (Apple File Sharing.) However it can be used for about anything, including hooks to scripting languages (AppleScript, Python, TCL) using the built in Open Scripting support.
Open Source is great but it didn't come up with this one first.
Actually I'm blaming folks who insist on using something that gives them poor service yet don't invest the 1-screen/2-minutes to learn how to get good results. Are these folks "victims"? No, they're just idiots: Intelligent folks learn how to select and use tools.
That point aside I'm trying to figure out the rest of your posting. You don't like the fact that different search engines use different formats? Well pick one and just use it. You prefer a GUI interface instead of a command-line type one? There are lots of those. You'd prefer a walk-through format? There's lots of those too.
I think you've got a point somewhere but I can't find it. I suppose my only comment would be that folks should, again, pick tools suited for the job. If it's not worth it to them to learn a seach syntax then they shouldn't use a search-engine that relies on one (DUH!) Google requires a syntax, many others don't, use one of them.
As to search-engines getting tricked into returning misleading its, yeah that's a problem but not a big one. So 5% or even 10% of the hits are come-ons to porn sites, there's still going to be ~30% good hits (the rest misses of varying degrees) and that's enough to be productive with.
Finally - don't tell someone not to be "smug and negative", I could insert some comments here about the apparent tone of your posting but that wouldn't be productive, lets just say I don't see those in my posting & drop it.
I believe that maggard is right about schools not doing their part in the information age, and teaching kids how to effectively use search engines, espically considering the fact that many schools are moving towards electronic card catalogs.
by asdef
Huh? Where'd I say that? Clearly your school isn't doing its part in teaching research & attribution.
Contrary I believe many schools *are* doing their part. No not all, but many. Tragically school libraries & school librarians have been tremendously short-changed in the past few decades, ironically often in order to fund sexy things like computer labs.
The truth is that the skills one needs to use in a library are even more critical now then they were in the past. As you correctly pointed out card-catalogues are dead, I can't think of any post-HS system that still seriously maintains one. Unfortunately the helpful Reference Librarian willing to walk a random person around and re-tech them the ropes have also been budget-cutted out of existence too. With the information explosion / the information economy the ability to search, prioritize, and compile material has become even more critical (not to mention the ability to comprehend the materials.)
Corporate knowledge-bases, electronic paperwork, web-based 'employee handbooks', online job searches & apartment rentals; these all require the ability to search for information in an efficient and comprehensive way. Search-engine cluelessness is simply a symptom of a wider problem.
That said again I believe schools are doing a reasonably good job. I know my old elementary & high schools are teaching kids how to use search engines, as is my old university library. My concern is for those out of the educational system.
Reading the directions doesn't seem onerous to me. If one is performing searches and coming up empty or with useless material then figuring out how to fine-tune one's searching doesn't seem to require any great intuitive leap. Yes it would be wonderful to live in a world as trivially comprehensible as the doorbell but lacking that most folks have learnt to READ THE DIRECTIONS.
Generally search engines do a great job of explaining how to use them. There are even search engines that try to out-think the user and parse their natural-language requests into regular search expressions. Google isn't one of these engines; it's a high-powered bare-to-the-metal engine that requires a certain amount of understanding by its users to use. On the other hand there are literally dozens of other engines that *do* walk a person through performing a decent search. The fact that folks pick the wrong tool for the job (a tool they neither know how to operate nor are willing to invest the 1-screen/2-minutes to learn) and then complain about their results seems to be just idiocy on the part of the user (or in this case an article author.)
Yes, the original article clearly set up a straw-man in order to promote these dedicated search engines, on the other hand there are legions of folks who continue to use search-engines every day with poor results and do complain about them.
The solution? I dunno - sell them more lottery tickets?
Of course much of the problem is that few folks actually understand how to search properly.
Most of us recall being brough into the school library and show how to use the card catalog, given a few assignements, etc. Unfortubately for those of us out of school the's not that set of skills in place to help searching.
Boolean seaches, using key words, supplying partial words, phrases, etc. are all supported by most search engines but few folks understand how to use them.
What's really suprising to me is that folks who use search engines regularly, indeed even rely upon them (journalists I mean you!) seem some of the most poorly prepared. There are lots of resources for learning how to do a good search, many from the search engines themselves and many more from third parties yet we still get these perennial "I can't find..." stories.
Honestly, I'm not into blaming-the-victim but how difficult is it to learn how to perform a good search? One screen of directions? Two minutes of time?
Yes there's a place for specialized engines handling unique or limited content but most of the larger, more general purpose engines do nearly as well if properly used. Again, it's dependant on the user to learn how to define what they want, all of the tools in the world are no good if they're not taken advantage of.
First of all I don't particularly care what you consider and don't consider a language.
Second I don't know what axe you're trying to grind but nowhere did I "hold it up and say it's more French than what they speak in France."
You keep setting up straw-men and then tearing them down. I'm sure it's entertaining but aside from any masturbatory joy you're getting out of this it's a poor form of rhetoric and in this case neither impressive or useful.
I'd also recommend you stop trying to imply these straw-men are from anyone other then from yourself and strive for a bit of intellectual honesty.
I did point out that even in France, and indeed in Paris folks don't live in the linguistic purity you seem to be obsessing about. You can go from there wherever you want but please don't credit me for your words or ideas.
Finally, as I noted before you're debating class & culture and apparently now aesthetics. Aside from my own feeling that's a particularly pointless effort it's also not one I give a damn about. You're welcome to your ivory tower, I've more interesting things to do with folks both more entertaining and more honest.
First of all it's not *my* language minister since I'm a US citizen - please don't make assumptions.
Secondly clearly you've never been to N. Africa, the Caribbean, Polynesia, etc. Indeed apparently you've never been outside Paris. French is spoken in all of these places and it's not your ideal-French either. Try Corsica sometime if you want 'different' French in France. Heck, even in Paris one finds a wide variety of French and again it's not all your dream-textbook French.
As I tried to make clear there's as much variation in French as there is in English. The same as da boyz in da 'hood may use their own talk the fine folks in Gaspasia have Joile (sp?)
French is a living language and contrary to the ideals of apparatchiks like Language Ministers (and apparently yourself) it's complicated, varied, and vibrant.
Yes learning French in Montreal would leave someone with an accent that would make a Parisian cry (generally considered a good thing in most parts of the world outside Paris.) However it would no less be French and would no less be useful.
I presume you speak English (as I know you write in it.) Is your accent the ideal you hold up? Would your voice be heard on a 1950's BBC World Service broadcast? Are your vowels properly rounded, your elocution studied and pronounced, your spoken structure direct out of a 1920's Oxford guide?
If not then I think you have no point: you're debating class and culture not language.
Actually that's an urban legend - often retold but not really true (brochures from tourist agencies notwithstanding.) No visiting scholar was struck by Cajun and recognized it for what it was, Cajun's anticedents, history, and influences have been well documented for a very long time. Even when Cajun was being supressed it was well known and studied by linguists.
There's always been lots of communication between Cajun, it's parent Acadian, and with Quebecois and French-from-France. There was never any revelation that Acadian or it's derivitive Cajun were related to a dialect spoken historically in certain parts of France. Families retained ties, histories are well documented and of course there was always commercial & social interaction.
By the way the same is true for English spoken in certain parts of the Canadian Maritimes. It's remains the closest to that spoken in parts of the UK in Shakespeare's time and there's been a great deal of study done to understand vowel-shifts etc. from historical times to present; much of it towards identifying exactly how Shakespear expected his iambic pentameter to sound.
- Michael, who enjoys watching his Acadian friends and his Quebecois friends try and figure out exactly what belongs in a torttierre.
Riiiggght - and the English one were to learn in Texas is....
French is French. I live in Montreal, I'm Anglophone & my sweetheart is Francophone. We deal all of the time with folks from other parts of the world and yes, they're understandable. Some of the folks from Gaspasia are a bit difficult but it's all French.
The French here is different then that spoken in Pais, as that differs from that spoken in Tolouse, Martinique, etc. Is any one of them "right"? Well Parisian French is generally considered (mostly by Parisians) to be the goal but that's about as realistic as BBC Received English being a big deal to most English speakers.
The same as English varies from that garble spoken by Scots to the record-played-at-half-speed of the deep US South to the twisty pronunciations by folks from India French varies and learning any of them, particularly for the extrememly isolated/insulated US population is always a good thing.
I also recall sering a news report on artificial muscles consisting of plastic filaments bunched together expanding and contracting in response to PH changes in a fluid bathing them. Unfortunately this also brought back memories of an awful Farah Fawcett sf film and I promptly blocked all detailed recollection.
Perhaps because you're running a beta? In-development OS's aren't tuned, they're still in the process of being assembled. From all reports the later internal releases of MacOS X are an order of magnitude faster then the general beta releases.
Tell, me - do you complain about the texture of a cake when you've pulled it from the oven 1/2-baked?
Yep - cloning is theft of intellectual property. The only reason that it was possible on PC's was by clean-room reverse-engineering and an OS vendor willing to sell to anybody. There have been a few Mac attempts long ago but few met with any success.
On the other hand if you're referring to the former Mac licensees (a very fundamental difference) then you're likely also right. Apple went into that expecting it's licensees would go into markets it couldn't make money in like the low end, extreme high end, consumer products and some foreign sales. Instead they ended up costing more then they brought in then they started eating into Apple's own markets.
Apple did what anyone would do - shut down the projects that were both bleeding it dry and costing it sales. I hardly see how there's anything offensive about that.
"Speaking practically, how easily can the worldwide dataflow be arrested in a country as populous and geographically diffuse as China?"
-- geophile
"The freedom of the press belongs to those who own one."
-- A.J. Liebling
How can one control data? By funnelling it through a few discrete points and heavily controlling what gets transmitted, which is exactly what Sun Microsystems is doing for China (they have the contract.)
By filtering what ports are used, analyzing transmitted content, forbidding & prosecuting use of cryptography (with a distinct lack of due process) etc. China call well control internet use within it's borders.
China has one of the lowest penetration rates of telephones in the world. Computers are generally only available limited circumstances. The percentage of computers with internet access is even lower, not something one sees in private homes of even the wealthy. Under these heavily controlled and highly accountable conditions can you imagine much "unauthorized use"? Particularly considering the possible repercussions?
Information wants to be free, and yes the 'net does route around censorship, but when one controls all of the lines one controls all of the routes around. Even in cases where material makes it though the dangers of being caught with it make it unlikely to propagate far.
Sure there are ways around it but we're not talking US school kids getting access to porn; we're talking ruined careers at best, an involuntary organ donation or a bullet through the back of the head at worst. As time goes on opportunities for 'getting lost in the flow' become greater but so does the technical sophistication of those monitoring use.
I'm sure the expat. Chinese news sites have guesstimates but from all accounts I've seen information flow within the PRC is indeed tightly controlled and by-and-large remaining so. General information gets through but politically sensitive material seems to be rather effectively smothered. Indeed the CIA World Factbook 2000 ed.(generally fairly good about numbers) lists China as having only 3 ISPs.
Generally most folks don't consider X-10's to be "Smart Houses". An argument could well be made for them, particularly the more elaborate setups but in most cases what's referred to as a "Smart House" is more then the extended lightswitch-type devices X-10 modules usually are.
Sensing, monitoring, complex-responses, etc. would be more in line with what is often meant. Your definition may of course vary widely.
That said are you aware of anyone doing any adaptive/learning/non-declarative stuff with these rudimentary devices?
"Smart Homes" that have intelligent appliances or other otherwise control their internal systems in a way more high-tech then the traditional discrete switches on the wall & the occasional independent light/water/etc-sensor & timers.
Neural Nets as a programming tool (method? algorithm? model?) vs. other more traditional explicit systems like cause/effect rules & preset series of grouped functions ("Party Mode", "Bedtime Mode", etc.)
Combining them is interesting but first you've got to find someone who has a "Smart House" then discover if they use "Neural Nets" in any way. Even on/. the number of folks who live in full-blown (or even partial) smart homes is incredibly small and with that small sample the odds of finding someone using neural nets is even more remote.
Consider posting on home.automation newsgroups, dedicated websites, and mailing-lists. There at least you'll have reached the first criteria of your study and can begin looking for the second.
I also wonder why neural nets would make any difference? Are you interested in systems that can 'learn' from an occupant? Are you looking to compare 'nets to other more traditional systems using sensors & statistics? Comparing different types of 'nets against each-other? Identifying learning-curves, ability to respond to differing situations, appropriateness of responses? How could one even evaluate "success" or "accuracy" against other automation systems? (Yes I know there are methods even for very fuzzy stuff like this but I can't imagine a sample-set out there being large enough to be meaningful.)
Not to be disparaging but unless your posting has been edited-to-idiocy it appears overly broad & extremely vague. Indeed what applicability any of this has to architecture escapes me. Systems Engineering, Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Human Interfaces: Yes but all of these are the provenance of specialists, not Architects (at least amongst the architectural curriculum I'm aware of.)
Or is this simply combining two hot buzzwords in a way to create a research project out of thin air?
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing
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"Standard Military Voltage" is what Circuit City applies to it's Drones just before every shift. If you look at the back of their skulls you can just see where the droud is fitted in. This is what results in their empty glazed look as they stumble about and read out the sales card to confused customers...
(Go ahead, go into any general electronics shop and ask the clerks to tell you one relevant thing about a computer product that's not on the card. It's not that everything is on the card, it's that they've had no training and know almost as little about computers as they do about French-Fryers, Car Audio & Talking Toasters (all departments they have also likely worked in the past month.))
Besides, Apple has negligible DOD sales these days. Consumer, Publishing, Graphics/Multimedia, Academia, and R&D institutions (particularly Bio folks) are the big Apple markets, military probably ranks after direct sales to "Hair Care Professionals".
Re:Solar wind will kill this thing
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Presumably this won't be a stock Cube in it's fancy case and standard equipment (hey, I can't hear the Harmon-Kardon speakers in space...)
Rather I expect they're planning a motherboard with a PPC in a heavily shielded case, likely with a bunch of thermal stabilization tricks and no hard drive (I presume the gyroscopic effect, spin-transfer, and of course environmental requirements of a hard drive wouldn't be welcome.) A couple meg of solid-state memory would do just as well as a hard drive anyway since it's not gonna be running Photoshop or any bloaty MS applications.
I doubt it'll run MacOS 9 (why bring along all of the integral GUI for a remote device) but rather some Darwin derivitive. Why Darwin over some other random *nix? Probably 'cause one can assume Darwin will work really well on a Apple motherboard with Apple's own Northbridge etc.
All said however I do wonder why the insistance of using a general design over those from groups like Hams & Universities have come up with. Also why on using Apple hardware in particular over the legions of equally small and at this point relatively efficient embedded x86 (as in 386 & 486 eqiv.) motherboards? I can't imagine processing-power is a bottleneck in this kind of application.
Aside from that there's been a *lot* of non-big-name comsat design, much of it remarkably clever & low cost as well as at this point relatively well tested. Reinventing the wheel, even if it's using very off-the-shelf components seems like little savings over using off-of-a-smaller-but-still-cheap-shelf with tried-&-true hardware. At the costs they're talking about the risk/savings ratio just doesn't seem to work out.
Of course I'm neither a motherboard designer nor a comsat engineer so probably there's a lot I don't have a clue about...
Yep, you heard me right: Apple's very popular line of AirPort wireless base-stations use x86 processors, not PowerPC ones.
Really the thing is little more then a
FlashROM, an off-brand x86 and of course Lucent's Orinoco PC-Card. The code running it is exemplarily, folks have found lots of goodies in it and Apple's put out several revs. of improvements, but not a PPC to be found.
Since the article talks about flying boxes with MacOS on PowerPC's then clearly the existing AirPort base-station technology is NOT the subject. There'd be nothing in common with either the hardware or the code. It'd be easier to start with a BSD underpinning (MacOS X) or something like Sustainable Software's products (MacOS >X.)
Thus, moderators, please bring down those postings that refer to flying AirPorts.
I'm sorry - is running a search engine too hard for you? It's not like there hasn't been about 10^23 articles on MacOS X in the past few years, many on/.
It's really pathetic when some pinhead has to ask someone else to explain every noun in a posting to him - I mean, this IS "News for Nerds". Go show some damn inititive.
Hint: at the lower left of the window is a box with a search button next to it...
Employer (former) was concerned an executive was getting ready to jump ship - and was going to walk with a lot of our propriatary information.
A few weeks previously I'd shocked the VP's when they asked about recovering a piece of email when I pointed out it was all backed-up on tape and that I had full access to *everything* (current and archived.) Apparently they'd never put together the implications of my being Sr. Net Admin & being a backup Postmaster, etc.
I'd then pulled some old tapes and gone (with permission) into the execs old email then run a few keyword searches for the password he'd forgotten (don't get me started - they really were a clueless lot... Brilliant in their fields but just sooo out of their depth with the technology in front of them.)
Anyway, I got them to put the snoop request in writing (cover my ass) then got the CEO to countersign it (yes a multi-billion-dollar corperation and he was a great guy; approachable and sharp.)
Duped the subjects email account (don't want to break anything by both of us being in it) and then, with a couple VP's looking over my shoulder, ran a few searches.
Not going to tell the results (irrelevant) but yes, we had authority to do what we did and yes, it was necc. How'd we have authority - cause the employee's handbook said we did (and heavily vetted by Legal) & regular memos reminded folks.
Did we publicize any of this? No. No no no. If the person had been not playing nice (again, not telling) then he'd have been locked out of all accounts ASAP, everything sequestered, and the next day the CEO would have met him at the door, accepted his resignation (form happening to be handy along with the head of HR and a few lawyers) and handed him his last (fat) check.
Word around the company: none. Gone - no comment, wish the best in future endeavors. Why? Well, one he could sue for word getting out (yeah yeah yeah the truth but that's a lot of legal bills later...) Two we didn't need to spook everyone and make them so paranoid that folks just couldn't work. Three - less problem. Most places operate on the path of least resistance and my former no less. If they could get away with just having stuff happen in the background so much the better.
So, the short of it is that no, I don't agree with your 'open' policy. Folks knew ('bout everyone but the VP's it seems) that stuff was an open book and just assumed that my staff had better things to do then read their email. They were of course right, but yeah, there were times where we did go into email and web logs, etc. under direction. Would have publicizing any of this served any purpose? Not really. Few would have understood it, most would have assumed we weren't telling all, and it would have been problematic to implement.
Fight the lawyers over the wording - they want it in their vernacular, you need to ensure it's simple & clear.
Accept that you're going to have to reserve all rights as broadly as possible. Yes you'll likely never spy on someone or snoop their email but you might have to someday & you need to make this possibility clear up front.
Spend an hour with your buddies dreaming up scenarios where you might need to do these actions and plan for them now. Again, you'll likely (hopefully) never need to do any of these but you have to make provisions for the possibility now.
The most basic rule is if it is done on company property or on company time or with company resources the company reserves all rights it can to viewing, recording, and using such.
Lots of/.'ers will recoil at this but I bet if they're employed by a publicly-listed company most will find the same basic tenants in their own employee handbook (please don't post your own unique circumstances - I said "most" & "publicly-listed". Yes there is the option of self-employment and there are unusual circumstances etc. but that's not really the topic.)
Bring the existing employees in on the planning. Don't surprise folks. Keep key figures involved in the evolution so it won't be a surprise. If folks learn along the way the why's of the policies and have their input sought, repected & used then they'll respect the policies and the company and share this confidence with others.
Strongly consider getting in an expert on this sort of thing - not just a lawyer who's first instinct is to cover your ass as much as possible but a seasoned HR-type who you folks like & respect and get their input. Listen to them about what is really important to you, to your employees, and presumably to the VC's who are mandating this.
Finally, look at the nearly-final product and decide if you'd want to work for the company you're creating. If not then start editing.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it annoying there both the /. headline and the original article's headline focus on MacOS X when the article is clearly about OS's & interfaces in general (though brought up in context of MacOS X.) It would have been more honestly headlined as "Former MacOS developer wishes OS's would fade into background".
Quantum QuickView. License it, pop it in your labeled box and you've got yourself a product. Guts supplied by the same folks that supply TiVo & Replay.
Why Quantum? The more drives they sell the better for them. It's in their interest to see this market take off and if providing a reference deseign is what it takes that's nothing new in the industry. Besides, they want to be the folks in this potentially enormous market.
No - it's not. Much (much) bigger and already involved in the market. Zapstation is - well, we'll be kind and call it a longshot.
One of the large hardware manufacturers is working on exactly this. Linux-based it's a framework for other companies to license and customize. Their goal is to supply a reference implementation of the base system which of course takes advantage of their hardware.
Presumably consumer-products companies coming late in the game to "digital-VCR's" will be happy to license this, do some customizing (either in-house or contracted with the developer) and then ship their own branded solutions.
What's interesting about this for the /. community is just how much of this turns out to be really specialized. From kernel modifications to optimized codecs to specially designed file-systems much of this can't be off-the-shelf for price/performance reasons. Apparently they're not terribly concerned about the home-brew market feeling that it'll just be cheaper to buy a dedicated box then retrofitting other hardware, attempting to get appropriate listings, maintaining the hw/sw, etc.
Of course I'm sure they're willing to sell their own industry-generic raw hardware to anyone, it's just the package that they're holding out for big fees.
Frankly even though this topic comes up again & again I think they're probably right. Sure my PC CD-player plays music fine but I prefer to have one in my livingroom dedicated to the audio system. Same with the DVD player, while it plays fine on the box & 21" monitor I've got one in the lvingroom 'cause it's better suited / more convenient there.
I expect for many of us a TiVo-type consumer box will be far more popular then a homebuilt. It's not like building your own computer 'cause the economics aren't likely to be as sweet and it'll be difficult to get source-material (the listings.)
Different but related topic:
What I *do* think would be hot would be custom-program-selection services where one could subscribe and get a selection of program-record-instructions emailed to my TV-box. Rather then it randomly recording stuff it thinks I *might* like or my explicitly setting the recording choices a third option of subscribing to a service (sushi-cooking@asianfood.com or st-nextgen-sans-wesley@stgeek.com) would be interesting.
Of course for this to work we'd need some sort of TV-listings-XML...
Generally it's used to point ftp to a real FTP client (Interarchie being popular) and afs to an AFS client (Apple File Sharing.) However it can be used for about anything, including hooks to scripting languages (AppleScript, Python, TCL) using the built in Open Scripting support.
Open Source is great but it didn't come up with this one first.
That point aside I'm trying to figure out the rest of your posting. You don't like the fact that different search engines use different formats? Well pick one and just use it. You prefer a GUI interface instead of a command-line type one? There are lots of those. You'd prefer a walk-through format? There's lots of those too.
I think you've got a point somewhere but I can't find it. I suppose my only comment would be that folks should, again, pick tools suited for the job. If it's not worth it to them to learn a seach syntax then they shouldn't use a search-engine that relies on one (DUH!) Google requires a syntax, many others don't, use one of them.
As to search-engines getting tricked into returning misleading its, yeah that's a problem but not a big one. So 5% or even 10% of the hits are come-ons to porn sites, there's still going to be ~30% good hits (the rest misses of varying degrees) and that's enough to be productive with.
Finally - don't tell someone not to be "smug and negative", I could insert some comments here about the apparent tone of your posting but that wouldn't be productive, lets just say I don't see those in my posting & drop it.
Huh? Where'd I say that? Clearly your school isn't doing its part in teaching research & attribution.
Contrary I believe many schools *are* doing their part. No not all, but many. Tragically school libraries & school librarians have been tremendously short-changed in the past few decades, ironically often in order to fund sexy things like computer labs.
The truth is that the skills one needs to use in a library are even more critical now then they were in the past. As you correctly pointed out card-catalogues are dead, I can't think of any post-HS system that still seriously maintains one. Unfortunately the helpful Reference Librarian willing to walk a random person around and re-tech them the ropes have also been budget-cutted out of existence too. With the information explosion / the information economy the ability to search, prioritize, and compile material has become even more critical (not to mention the ability to comprehend the materials.)
Corporate knowledge-bases, electronic paperwork, web-based 'employee handbooks', online job searches & apartment rentals; these all require the ability to search for information in an efficient and comprehensive way. Search-engine cluelessness is simply a symptom of a wider problem.
That said again I believe schools are doing a reasonably good job. I know my old elementary & high schools are teaching kids how to use search engines, as is my old university library. My concern is for those out of the educational system.
Reading the directions doesn't seem onerous to me. If one is performing searches and coming up empty or with useless material then figuring out how to fine-tune one's searching doesn't seem to require any great intuitive leap. Yes it would be wonderful to live in a world as trivially comprehensible as the doorbell but lacking that most folks have learnt to READ THE DIRECTIONS.
Generally search engines do a great job of explaining how to use them. There are even search engines that try to out-think the user and parse their natural-language requests into regular search expressions. Google isn't one of these engines; it's a high-powered bare-to-the-metal engine that requires a certain amount of understanding by its users to use. On the other hand there are literally dozens of other engines that *do* walk a person through performing a decent search. The fact that folks pick the wrong tool for the job (a tool they neither know how to operate nor are willing to invest the 1-screen/2-minutes to learn) and then complain about their results seems to be just idiocy on the part of the user (or in this case an article author.)
Yes, the original article clearly set up a straw-man in order to promote these dedicated search engines, on the other hand there are legions of folks who continue to use search-engines every day with poor results and do complain about them.
The solution? I dunno - sell them more lottery tickets?
Most of us recall being brough into the school library and show how to use the card catalog, given a few assignements, etc. Unfortubately for those of us out of school the's not that set of skills in place to help searching.
Boolean seaches, using key words, supplying partial words, phrases, etc. are all supported by most search engines but few folks understand how to use them.
What's really suprising to me is that folks who use search engines regularly, indeed even rely upon them (journalists I mean you!) seem some of the most poorly prepared. There are lots of resources for learning how to do a good search, many from the search engines themselves and many more from third parties yet we still get these perennial "I can't find ..." stories.
Honestly, I'm not into blaming-the-victim but how difficult is it to learn how to perform a good search? One screen of directions? Two minutes of time?
Yes there's a place for specialized engines handling unique or limited content but most of the larger, more general purpose engines do nearly as well if properly used. Again, it's dependant on the user to learn how to define what they want, all of the tools in the world are no good if they're not taken advantage of.
Second I don't know what axe you're trying to grind but nowhere did I "hold it up and say it's more French than what they speak in France."
You keep setting up straw-men and then tearing them down. I'm sure it's entertaining but aside from any masturbatory joy you're getting out of this it's a poor form of rhetoric and in this case neither impressive or useful.
I'd also recommend you stop trying to imply these straw-men are from anyone other then from yourself and strive for a bit of intellectual honesty.
I did point out that even in France, and indeed in Paris folks don't live in the linguistic purity you seem to be obsessing about. You can go from there wherever you want but please don't credit me for your words or ideas.
Finally, as I noted before you're debating class & culture and apparently now aesthetics. Aside from my own feeling that's a particularly pointless effort it's also not one I give a damn about. You're welcome to your ivory tower, I've more interesting things to do with folks both more entertaining and more honest.
Cheers.
Secondly clearly you've never been to N. Africa, the Caribbean, Polynesia, etc. Indeed apparently you've never been outside Paris. French is spoken in all of these places and it's not your ideal-French either. Try Corsica sometime if you want 'different' French in France. Heck, even in Paris one finds a wide variety of French and again it's not all your dream-textbook French.
As I tried to make clear there's as much variation in French as there is in English. The same as da boyz in da 'hood may use their own talk the fine folks in Gaspasia have Joile (sp?)
French is a living language and contrary to the ideals of apparatchiks like Language Ministers (and apparently yourself) it's complicated, varied, and vibrant.
Yes learning French in Montreal would leave someone with an accent that would make a Parisian cry (generally considered a good thing in most parts of the world outside Paris.) However it would no less be French and would no less be useful.
I presume you speak English (as I know you write in it.) Is your accent the ideal you hold up? Would your voice be heard on a 1950's BBC World Service broadcast? Are your vowels properly rounded, your elocution studied and pronounced, your spoken structure direct out of a 1920's Oxford guide?
If not then I think you have no point: you're debating class and culture not language.
There's always been lots of communication between Cajun, it's parent Acadian, and with Quebecois and French-from-France. There was never any revelation that Acadian or it's derivitive Cajun were related to a dialect spoken historically in certain parts of France. Families retained ties, histories are well documented and of course there was always commercial & social interaction.
By the way the same is true for English spoken in certain parts of the Canadian Maritimes. It's remains the closest to that spoken in parts of the UK in Shakespeare's time and there's been a great deal of study done to understand vowel-shifts etc. from historical times to present; much of it towards identifying exactly how Shakespear expected his iambic pentameter to sound.
- Michael, who enjoys watching his Acadian friends and his Quebecois friends try and figure out exactly what belongs in a torttierre.
French is French. I live in Montreal, I'm Anglophone & my sweetheart is Francophone. We deal all of the time with folks from other parts of the world and yes, they're understandable. Some of the folks from Gaspasia are a bit difficult but it's all French.
The French here is different then that spoken in Pais, as that differs from that spoken in Tolouse, Martinique, etc. Is any one of them "right"? Well Parisian French is generally considered (mostly by Parisians) to be the goal but that's about as realistic as BBC Received English being a big deal to most English speakers.
The same as English varies from that garble spoken by Scots to the record-played-at-half-speed of the deep US South to the twisty pronunciations by folks from India French varies and learning any of them, particularly for the extrememly isolated/insulated US population is always a good thing.
By the way, all written French is identical.
Except of course diamond is far too brittle, we know of no way to weld or bond it and then there's that fire issue...
Tell, me - do you complain about the texture of a cake when you've pulled it from the oven 1/2-baked?
On the other hand if you're referring to the former Mac licensees (a very fundamental difference) then you're likely also right. Apple went into that expecting it's licensees would go into markets it couldn't make money in like the low end, extreme high end, consumer products and some foreign sales. Instead they ended up costing more then they brought in then they started eating into Apple's own markets.
Apple did what anyone would do - shut down the projects that were both bleeding it dry and costing it sales. I hardly see how there's anything offensive about that.
How can one control data? By funnelling it through a few discrete points and heavily controlling what gets transmitted, which is exactly what Sun Microsystems is doing for China (they have the contract.)
By filtering what ports are used, analyzing transmitted content, forbidding & prosecuting use of cryptography (with a distinct lack of due process) etc. China call well control internet use within it's borders.
China has one of the lowest penetration rates of telephones in the world. Computers are generally only available limited circumstances. The percentage of computers with internet access is even lower, not something one sees in private homes of even the wealthy. Under these heavily controlled and highly accountable conditions can you imagine much "unauthorized use"? Particularly considering the possible repercussions?
Information wants to be free, and yes the 'net does route around censorship, but when one controls all of the lines one controls all of the routes around. Even in cases where material makes it though the dangers of being caught with it make it unlikely to propagate far.
Sure there are ways around it but we're not talking US school kids getting access to porn; we're talking ruined careers at best, an involuntary organ donation or a bullet through the back of the head at worst. As time goes on opportunities for 'getting lost in the flow' become greater but so does the technical sophistication of those monitoring use.
I'm sure the expat. Chinese news sites have guesstimates but from all accounts I've seen information flow within the PRC is indeed tightly controlled and by-and-large remaining so. General information gets through but politically sensitive material seems to be rather effectively smothered. Indeed the CIA World Factbook 2000 ed.(generally fairly good about numbers) lists China as having only 3 ISPs.
Sensing, monitoring, complex-responses, etc. would be more in line with what is often meant. Your definition may of course vary widely.
That said are you aware of anyone doing any adaptive/learning/non-declarative stuff with these rudimentary devices?
Combining them is interesting but first you've got to find someone who has a "Smart House" then discover if they use "Neural Nets" in any way. Even on /. the number of folks who live in full-blown (or even partial) smart homes is incredibly small and with that small sample the odds of finding someone using neural nets is even more remote.
Consider posting on home.automation newsgroups, dedicated websites, and mailing-lists. There at least you'll have reached the first criteria of your study and can begin looking for the second.
I also wonder why neural nets would make any difference? Are you interested in systems that can 'learn' from an occupant? Are you looking to compare 'nets to other more traditional systems using sensors & statistics? Comparing different types of 'nets against each-other? Identifying learning-curves, ability to respond to differing situations, appropriateness of responses? How could one even evaluate "success" or "accuracy" against other automation systems? (Yes I know there are methods even for very fuzzy stuff like this but I can't imagine a sample-set out there being large enough to be meaningful.)
Not to be disparaging but unless your posting has been edited-to-idiocy it appears overly broad & extremely vague. Indeed what applicability any of this has to architecture escapes me. Systems Engineering, Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Human Interfaces: Yes but all of these are the provenance of specialists, not Architects (at least amongst the architectural curriculum I'm aware of.)
Or is this simply combining two hot buzzwords in a way to create a research project out of thin air?
(Go ahead, go into any general electronics shop and ask the clerks to tell you one relevant thing about a computer product that's not on the card. It's not that everything is on the card, it's that they've had no training and know almost as little about computers as they do about French-Fryers, Car Audio & Talking Toasters (all departments they have also likely worked in the past month.))
Besides, Apple has negligible DOD sales these days. Consumer, Publishing, Graphics/Multimedia, Academia, and R&D institutions (particularly Bio folks) are the big Apple markets, military probably ranks after direct sales to "Hair Care Professionals".
Rather I expect they're planning a motherboard with a PPC in a heavily shielded case, likely with a bunch of thermal stabilization tricks and no hard drive (I presume the gyroscopic effect, spin-transfer, and of course environmental requirements of a hard drive wouldn't be welcome.) A couple meg of solid-state memory would do just as well as a hard drive anyway since it's not gonna be running Photoshop or any bloaty MS applications.
I doubt it'll run MacOS 9 (why bring along all of the integral GUI for a remote device) but rather some Darwin derivitive. Why Darwin over some other random *nix? Probably 'cause one can assume Darwin will work really well on a Apple motherboard with Apple's own Northbridge etc.
All said however I do wonder why the insistance of using a general design over those from groups like Hams & Universities have come up with. Also why on using Apple hardware in particular over the legions of equally small and at this point relatively efficient embedded x86 (as in 386 & 486 eqiv.) motherboards? I can't imagine processing-power is a bottleneck in this kind of application.
Aside from that there's been a *lot* of non-big-name comsat design, much of it remarkably clever & low cost as well as at this point relatively well tested. Reinventing the wheel, even if it's using very off-the-shelf components seems like little savings over using off-of-a-smaller-but-still-cheap-shelf with tried-&-true hardware. At the costs they're talking about the risk/savings ratio just doesn't seem to work out.
Of course I'm neither a motherboard designer nor a comsat engineer so probably there's a lot I don't have a clue about...
Really the thing is little more then a FlashROM, an off-brand x86 and of course Lucent's Orinoco PC-Card. The code running it is exemplarily, folks have found lots of goodies in it and Apple's put out several revs. of improvements, but not a PPC to be found.
Since the article talks about flying boxes with MacOS on PowerPC's then clearly the existing AirPort base-station technology is NOT the subject. There'd be nothing in common with either the hardware or the code. It'd be easier to start with a BSD underpinning (MacOS X) or something like Sustainable Software's products (MacOS >X.)
Thus, moderators, please bring down those postings that refer to flying AirPorts.
BTW, a good (though dated) AirPort technology link is http://www.msrl.com/airport-gold
It's really pathetic when some pinhead has to ask someone else to explain every noun in a posting to him - I mean, this IS "News for Nerds". Go show some damn inititive.
Hint: at the lower left of the window is a box with a search button next to it...
Employer (former) was concerned an executive was getting ready to jump ship - and was going to walk with a lot of our propriatary information.
A few weeks previously I'd shocked the VP's when they asked about recovering a piece of email when I pointed out it was all backed-up on tape and that I had full access to *everything* (current and archived.) Apparently they'd never put together the implications of my being Sr. Net Admin & being a backup Postmaster, etc.
I'd then pulled some old tapes and gone (with permission) into the execs old email then run a few keyword searches for the password he'd forgotten (don't get me started - they really were a clueless lot... Brilliant in their fields but just sooo out of their depth with the technology in front of them.)
Anyway, I got them to put the snoop request in writing (cover my ass) then got the CEO to countersign it (yes a multi-billion-dollar corperation and he was a great guy; approachable and sharp.)
Duped the subjects email account (don't want to break anything by both of us being in it) and then, with a couple VP's looking over my shoulder, ran a few searches.
Not going to tell the results (irrelevant) but yes, we had authority to do what we did and yes, it was necc. How'd we have authority - cause the employee's handbook said we did (and heavily vetted by Legal) & regular memos reminded folks.
Did we publicize any of this? No. No no no. If the person had been not playing nice (again, not telling) then he'd have been locked out of all accounts ASAP, everything sequestered, and the next day the CEO would have met him at the door, accepted his resignation (form happening to be handy along with the head of HR and a few lawyers) and handed him his last (fat) check.
Word around the company: none. Gone - no comment, wish the best in future endeavors. Why? Well, one he could sue for word getting out (yeah yeah yeah the truth but that's a lot of legal bills later...) Two we didn't need to spook everyone and make them so paranoid that folks just couldn't work. Three - less problem. Most places operate on the path of least resistance and my former no less. If they could get away with just having stuff happen in the background so much the better.
So, the short of it is that no, I don't agree with your 'open' policy. Folks knew ('bout everyone but the VP's it seems) that stuff was an open book and just assumed that my staff had better things to do then read their email. They were of course right, but yeah, there were times where we did go into email and web logs, etc. under direction. Would have publicizing any of this served any purpose? Not really. Few would have understood it, most would have assumed we weren't telling all, and it would have been problematic to implement.
Fight the lawyers over the wording - they want it in their vernacular, you need to ensure it's simple & clear.
Accept that you're going to have to reserve all rights as broadly as possible. Yes you'll likely never spy on someone or snoop their email but you might have to someday & you need to make this possibility clear up front.
Spend an hour with your buddies dreaming up scenarios where you might need to do these actions and plan for them now. Again, you'll likely (hopefully) never need to do any of these but you have to make provisions for the possibility now.
The most basic rule is if it is done on company property or on company time or with company resources the company reserves all rights it can to viewing, recording, and using such.
Lots of /.'ers will recoil at this but I bet if they're employed by a publicly-listed company most will find the same basic tenants in their own employee handbook (please don't post your own unique circumstances - I said "most" & "publicly-listed". Yes there is the option of self-employment and there are unusual circumstances etc. but that's not really the topic.)
Bring the existing employees in on the planning. Don't surprise folks. Keep key figures involved in the evolution so it won't be a surprise. If folks learn along the way the why's of the policies and have their input sought, repected & used then they'll respect the policies and the company and share this confidence with others.
Strongly consider getting in an expert on this sort of thing - not just a lawyer who's first instinct is to cover your ass as much as possible but a seasoned HR-type who you folks like & respect and get their input. Listen to them about what is really important to you, to your employees, and presumably to the VC's who are mandating this.
Finally, look at the nearly-final product and decide if you'd want to work for the company you're creating. If not then start editing.