Due to a Federal law that was passed called the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) people in the United States are now entitled to one free credit report annually from each agency.
Immediately offer a large, tax-free, cash prize for the first company to put 1000 kilograms in the same orbit as the Space Station, and then do it again within three weeks.
The only drawback to this is then you could end up with 100 failed attempts polluting the ISS orbit or orbital paths to the ISS with more space junk than you could wave a stick at. Not to mention you could actually have one of them actually damage the ISS incredibly with one slip-up. Who do you blame then?
I'm all for privatization, but it must be done in a very monitored approach, not in a shotgun fashion. We have no way to clean up our orbit as of yet and if we clutter it with failed amatuerish attempts it could really limit us in the future.
Yes, this is also probably the reason it's so easy for serial killers, con-men, etc. to get away with their crimes.
People assume (especially when young) that people who look, sound, act like them or have a certain demeanor are not a threat and let their guard down (even for just a second, which is all it takes).
This is also probably the reason for social engineering. The person assumes you are a good guy who just 'forgot his password' and hands it out without thinking.
It's an interesting human flaw that no matter how hard you try to avoid it can bite you in the ass.
(police man knocks on your door, you look through the peep hole and then open the door a crack...even having seen/heard of thousands of murders on TV, watched numerous fictional shows on it, maybe even one where the criminal posed as a policeman).
1) MP3 format will stumble in a fall from grace comparable to Napster. With all this licensing crap there will be a few cases brought to light and the media will mention Ogg Vorbis (similar to what happened when they listed all the other alternatives to Napster users could use when it shutdown). Ogg will take over.
2) Biometrics and other 'security' products will prove to falter as they just override on top of preexisting unsecure login methods. At least one major breach will be reported in the news.
3) The online holiday shopping season will finally be reported as a resounding success in February 'Surpassing all expectations' just like last year.
4) Customer service will continue to be a problem acrossed the board.
5) There will be some major failures with several high profile companies. Not business type failures, but failures in their technologies or methods of production due to all the layoffs of their technical staff.
6) Companies will start to realize they now have to hire 10 people to do the work that could have been done if they would have kept some competent and innovative techies on staff to automate the processes. Therefore they will come out of their shell and start hiring back some tech personnel.
7) Startup tech companies will shrug off the current shadow following them and once again start to emerge as the leaders in innovation. At least one will burst onto the scene with a world changing method or package (i.e. similar to a napsteresque surge into the spotlight)..this may be a solo person similar to fanning that then forms a company or a small startup of a few people that create something.
I'm quite willing to pay my SS taxes and even to take reduced benefits in the future and at a later age than our current crop of retirees.
It's hard for me to believe my older friends don't feel at least a little bit guilty if they're drawing handsome SS benefits while their other sources of retirement income amount to many times as much.
Yeah, I bet you'll feel really guilty when you go to cash your first SS check. You'll have all of us 'Gen-X' people on your mind, who won't see a dime of what we're paying.
I don't mean to bag on you personally, for you sound genuinely sincere, however you will at least be getting something in return. Whereas we will get nothing and there's not much we can do about it because it's not a volunteer program.
I think that is what tinges the Gen-Xers as slackers the most, that others trying to understand our view on things overlook. Stepping into our shoes you see a lack of a future in regards to what the people in generations we know of (parents and grandparents) have had.
No steady job, bad government programs, and a lack of security. The fact of the matter is you will have a lot of schmucks on slashdot commenting on how 'You should look out for yourself, blah blah blah', these are the same schmucks that seem to think everyone is as smart as they are or have had the same 'financial education and exposure' throughout their upbringing. Talk about Holier Than Thou!, sheesh. If they'd look around for just 10 seconds they'd see all the people around who don't have that capability either mentally or educationally. Just because you were lucky enough to have parents that instilled those ideals does not mean everyone did.
It's a sad truth that not everyone has a genius IQ or is the same disciplined beings as these high and mighty idiots are and that probably 90% of the people don't fit their 'mold' and should be castrated for it, but it's reality.
I just get sick of these people who sidestepped the ills of the world, didn't step on a few landmines in their life or had a mentor, telling everyone how they're idiots for not having had that. It's a matter of correcting the problem not calling people dolts, idiots or fuck ups because of youthful missteps.
It seems that Alice's responses are all just a reflection of a human's decision of what is appropriate, and what isn't. The machine is not making the actual decision of what to say, it is merely spurting sentences that are pre-existant.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. A bunch of if/then statements do not make intelligence they make a 'state machine'.
I also agree with Dr. Rich though that humans are highly robotic for the most part. We learn certain things and stick with them. We fall into patterns and ruts. So much so that someone can watch and predict what a person will do from day to day. From the direction they take to work to the time they leave the office.
The big difference is when something unexpected happens. Humans can adapt on the fly. If a client needs a last minute change on something you have the creative intellect to maybe throw that change in there, whereas a state machine would leave at precisely 5pm, unless contingency programming were already in place for that situation.
I think a lot of it has to do with our right brain and creativity.
The trick of it is making a seperate program/module to A.L.I.C.E, a 'right brain' that has the ability to add in those 'on the fly' reactions on its own based off of what it currently knows on the 'left brain' side.
If those reactions are appropriate (positively reinforced) then they are permanently added in.
This seems to diverge a tad from Dr. Rich's position though in that he prefers the 'pre-approved' insertion of information rather than a self-learning machine.
Who are we to say he is wrong though? I talked to A.L.I.C.E. upon reading the initial question article and was quite amused with the responses and even had an emotional reaction to some of them. I don't believe that makes her/it 'alive', but I do see it as being a useful endeavour.
Keep working on things Dr. Rich! We all want scientific research to go forward and major breakthroughs come from persevering and to keep moving forward no matter what others say.
So you are saying that the poor people you mention would rather live under communism? Let me inform you that many whites also live under major economic inequality. Economic inequality is a reality of life in a capitalistic society. Those who work hard and strive to make the most out of their lives will tend to rise above poverty and enter the middle class. Why do you think immigrants fight to come to the US? It is because the US offers unparalleled opportunity. How many people are fighting to live in Cuba or China? On my last cab ride in Philadelphia the cab driver who barely spoke English had an O'Reilly book on web programming. What a country!
Just to back him up on this, check out Japan after World War 2 vs. say the Philippines or North Korea. Japan has to import a crapload of everything it needs just as those countries, yet the Japanese rose up after being pretty well beaten down and became a world power while the other two nations have kinda sat on their hands for the past 60 years.
It's a shame really, but in the end the populations as a whole always seem to blame it on some outside 'force'. They always point the finger at others.
Actually, refering to anyone by their race (unless it's about white people) is outright taken as a racist statement.
Ever seen a white comedian cracking jokes about black, asian or jewish people? How about black or asian (I know they're rare) comedians laughing about how white people walk or talk?
It's a double standard that will not go away.
I suppose I'm a racist for even mentioning it.
But it just gets to be annoying that if I ask someone politely to turn down their radio (as I would to any dumbass that is blasting it too loud at 7:30am) I get looked at as though I'm specifically targeting them due to race.
If someone asked me to turn my music down I wouldn't instantly jump to the conclusion and say 'is it because I'm white?'
It filters all the way down to the fact that if you specifically target inspecting arab nationals before they board a plane because that is the nationality of the terrorist attackers that you are being a racist state. I guess they should be focusing on black old ladies in wheelchairs instead huh?
If the terrorists were bald white geeky guys I wouldn't be offended if I was asked to be checked before getting on a plane (that is of course if I was bald white and geeky, which I'm not, I'm more like a mix between Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson, but that's beyond the point;) ).
Yes John,
But really should he be expected by everyone to come to their rescue? I am of the same ilk as the fellow above.
It gets really annoying helping the same people over and over and over again. Should I have to do the support for the companies? Should family members not call the support themselves and try to solve the issue themselves? I don't go running off to other family members to answer every question I have regarding something they do in their profession.
Most people tend to try to take the easy way out on things, and in computers that's an oxymoron. There is no easy way in computers. From installing an OS to learning programming to building or even selecting a computer it is all trial and error.
It's almost like you are being punished for your learning ability (not to mention most of the time by the same people who told you that you were wasting your time messing with computers as you were growing up).
So should us techies feel sorry for them? I say no.
i managed to use my big cranium to automate much of my job & soar the companies income, unfortuneatly, i also made the systems streamlined and simple so that they could replace me with a clueless dork for a fraction of my pay.
Had a similar thing happen. So much for trying to make things easy for 'non-technical personnel' to use.
Microsoft stock has essentially plateaued -- it's been bouncing around $50-70 for about two years, and dividends are not paid to shareholders. The days of MSFT stock splits leading to the purchase of a new house are over. Microsoft may be a reliable internal moneymaker for some time to come, but it's no longer a realistic investment growth vehicle. Likewise the traditional model technology product business have suffered -- the computer hardware industry has become a lean area, squeezing the life out of traditional middle markets (and driving it online). Traditional old-school service organizations (KPMG and the like) have laid off tens of thousands.
Someone forgot to realize we have been in a Recession for awhile. I suppose that's supposed to make no difference for the companies that sell to other businesses that have gone under or contracted in size and laid off personnel.
I guess they were expected to just continue growing throughout this whole time with no slowdown. They were supposed to grow at doubled digits and expand even further.
While you make some interesting and seemingly accurate points you also fail to realize that Microsoft has not had to lay personnel off.
When the money flows back into the market Microsoft will rise again as well as a lot of other companies that seem 'stagnant' but had been growing previous to this downturn.
If these giants were being severely hurt as you claim they would be laying on the ropes with the loses and the economic downturn at the same time.
On a lighter note Microsoft servers suck ass and they need to stay out of that space imho
Marc took every opportunity he could find to trash Microsoft and claim that Netscape was going to replace them.
But don't discount the fact that there were plenty of people outside Microsoft looking to stick a knife in Marc's back.
Yes and by doing so getting press that bopped Netscape into the spotlight and popped their IPO through the ceiling making himself many millions of dollars...
Your assertion that this is the only reason Apple is still around sounds like that of a Mac hater who thinks Apple is a crappy toy maker that should go under. Forgive me if I read into your comments wrong, but that's what the wording suggests to me.;-) But anyway, I strongly disagree with that.
I didn't mean it like that. I don't hate Apple, hell I was brought up in the Apple IIe age. The fact is, as a business, if Apples were not the first thing a lot of non-computer users would have been exposed to in school, when they hit the world and got a job their first exposure would have been to MS crap.
Apple would have eventually gone away as new users did not get exposed to it.
The other big push that has kept Apple around and got them exposure imho is their little cutesy designs that seem to appeal to the artistic and, not to be sexist, to women. Women just don't seem to gravitate to some big hunky ugly white metal/plastic square box (and I don't blame em, it really isn't appealing from an artistic standpoint).
In closing, in order for users to stick with a quality product they have to first be exposed to it. Without exposure they don't know it exists and settle for what they know.
A lot of companies are no realising that people stick with what they know. Give a student a discount on your software and when they go on to ear big bucks they will buy the retail versions. (Hello calling macromedia)
I still believe that this is the only reason apple is still around. With their school program donations. People who are not techie geeks like us tend to stick with what they have been exposed to.
A lot of the people I know that have owned apple machines are non techies who got them because that's what they knew how to use.
Morpheus didn't pay the bills and KaZaa called them on it. Morpheus' CEO sounds like a real egomaniac from his comments in the news and on their website and I'm betting he figured he'd wait til they turned him off and then blame THEM and try to make KaZaa look like the assholes.
Obviously he knew about non-payed bills and the apparent chance of being shutdown otherwise they wouldn't have has a Gnutella client all developed and ready for release within a few days.
If someone at Morpheus is reading this pass it on to your CEO and tell him that treating partners like this doesn't make anyone want to work with your company and makes him look like a prick.
I have no affiliation with either company and am strictly speaking as an outsider having dealt with people and situations like this. Is anyone else sick of this ego crap?
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You are my hero! Couldn't have put it better myself.
The only drawback to this is then you could end up with 100 failed attempts polluting the ISS orbit or orbital paths to the ISS with more space junk than you could wave a stick at. Not to mention you could actually have one of them actually damage the ISS incredibly with one slip-up. Who do you blame then?
I'm all for privatization, but it must be done in a very monitored approach, not in a shotgun fashion. We have no way to clean up our orbit as of yet and if we clutter it with failed amatuerish attempts it could really limit us in the future.
Dig
People assume (especially when young) that people who look, sound, act like them or have a certain demeanor are not a threat and let their guard down (even for just a second, which is all it takes).
This is also probably the reason for social engineering. The person assumes you are a good guy who just 'forgot his password' and hands it out without thinking.
It's an interesting human flaw that no matter how hard you try to avoid it can bite you in the ass. (police man knocks on your door, you look through the peep hole and then open the door a crack...even having seen/heard of thousands of murders on TV, watched numerous fictional shows on it, maybe even one where the criminal posed as a policeman).
Dig
It's interesting how people automatically assume he was some explorer, a hero of his time.
Dig
1) MP3 format will stumble in a fall from grace comparable to Napster. With all this licensing crap there will be a few cases brought to light and the media will mention Ogg Vorbis (similar to what happened when they listed all the other alternatives to Napster users could use when it shutdown). Ogg will take over.
2) Biometrics and other 'security' products will prove to falter as they just override on top of preexisting unsecure login methods. At least one major breach will be reported in the news.
3) The online holiday shopping season will finally be reported as a resounding success in February 'Surpassing all expectations' just like last year.
4) Customer service will continue to be a problem acrossed the board.
5) There will be some major failures with several high profile companies. Not business type failures, but failures in their technologies or methods of production due to all the layoffs of their technical staff.
6) Companies will start to realize they now have to hire 10 people to do the work that could have been done if they would have kept some competent and innovative techies on staff to automate the processes. Therefore they will come out of their shell and start hiring back some tech personnel.
7) Startup tech companies will shrug off the current shadow following them and once again start to emerge as the leaders in innovation. At least one will burst onto the scene with a world changing method or package (i.e. similar to a napsteresque surge into the spotlight)..this may be a solo person similar to fanning that then forms a company or a small startup of a few people that create something.
It's hard for me to believe my older friends don't feel at least a little bit guilty if they're drawing handsome SS benefits while their other sources of retirement income amount to many times as much.
Yeah, I bet you'll feel really guilty when you go to cash your first SS check. You'll have all of us 'Gen-X' people on your mind, who won't see a dime of what we're paying.
I don't mean to bag on you personally, for you sound genuinely sincere, however you will at least be getting something in return. Whereas we will get nothing and there's not much we can do about it because it's not a volunteer program.
I think that is what tinges the Gen-Xers as slackers the most, that others trying to understand our view on things overlook. Stepping into our shoes you see a lack of a future in regards to what the people in generations we know of (parents and grandparents) have had.
No steady job, bad government programs, and a lack of security. The fact of the matter is you will have a lot of schmucks on slashdot commenting on how 'You should look out for yourself, blah blah blah', these are the same schmucks that seem to think everyone is as smart as they are or have had the same 'financial education and exposure' throughout their upbringing. Talk about Holier Than Thou!, sheesh. If they'd look around for just 10 seconds they'd see all the people around who don't have that capability either mentally or educationally. Just because you were lucky enough to have parents that instilled those ideals does not mean everyone did.
It's a sad truth that not everyone has a genius IQ or is the same disciplined beings as these high and mighty idiots are and that probably 90% of the people don't fit their 'mold' and should be castrated for it, but it's reality.
I just get sick of these people who sidestepped the ills of the world, didn't step on a few landmines in their life or had a mentor, telling everyone how they're idiots for not having had that. It's a matter of correcting the problem not calling people dolts, idiots or fuck ups because of youthful missteps.
Enough ranting *exhales*
I wholeheartedly agree with you. A bunch of if/then statements do not make intelligence they make a 'state machine'.
I also agree with Dr. Rich though that humans are highly robotic for the most part. We learn certain things and stick with them. We fall into patterns and ruts. So much so that someone can watch and predict what a person will do from day to day. From the direction they take to work to the time they leave the office.
The big difference is when something unexpected happens. Humans can adapt on the fly. If a client needs a last minute change on something you have the creative intellect to maybe throw that change in there, whereas a state machine would leave at precisely 5pm, unless contingency programming were already in place for that situation.
I think a lot of it has to do with our right brain and creativity.
The trick of it is making a seperate program/module to A.L.I.C.E, a 'right brain' that has the ability to add in those 'on the fly' reactions on its own based off of what it currently knows on the 'left brain' side.
If those reactions are appropriate (positively reinforced) then they are permanently added in.
This seems to diverge a tad from Dr. Rich's position though in that he prefers the 'pre-approved' insertion of information rather than a self-learning machine.
Who are we to say he is wrong though? I talked to A.L.I.C.E. upon reading the initial question article and was quite amused with the responses and even had an emotional reaction to some of them. I don't believe that makes her/it 'alive', but I do see it as being a useful endeavour.
Keep working on things Dr. Rich! We all want scientific research to go forward and major breakthroughs come from persevering and to keep moving forward no matter what others say.
- Dig
Just to back him up on this, check out Japan after World War 2 vs. say the Philippines or North Korea. Japan has to import a crapload of everything it needs just as those countries, yet the Japanese rose up after being pretty well beaten down and became a world power while the other two nations have kinda sat on their hands for the past 60 years.
It's a shame really, but in the end the populations as a whole always seem to blame it on some outside 'force'. They always point the finger at others.
I was waiting for them to break into song.
Free except for all the energy you spent spinning that disc 5000+ rpm's...it's not free energy, it's a transference of energy in that case.
Ever seen a white comedian cracking jokes about black, asian or jewish people? How about black or asian (I know they're rare) comedians laughing about how white people walk or talk?
It's a double standard that will not go away.
I suppose I'm a racist for even mentioning it.
But it just gets to be annoying that if I ask someone politely to turn down their radio (as I would to any dumbass that is blasting it too loud at 7:30am) I get looked at as though I'm specifically targeting them due to race.
If someone asked me to turn my music down I wouldn't instantly jump to the conclusion and say 'is it because I'm white?'
It filters all the way down to the fact that if you specifically target inspecting arab nationals before they board a plane because that is the nationality of the terrorist attackers that you are being a racist state. I guess they should be focusing on black old ladies in wheelchairs instead huh?
If the terrorists were bald white geeky guys I wouldn't be offended if I was asked to be checked before getting on a plane (that is of course if I was bald white and geeky, which I'm not, I'm more like a mix between Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson, but that's beyond the point ;) ).
Good to know I'm not just imagining things.
But really should he be expected by everyone to come to their rescue? I am of the same ilk as the fellow above.
It gets really annoying helping the same people over and over and over again. Should I have to do the support for the companies? Should family members not call the support themselves and try to solve the issue themselves? I don't go running off to other family members to answer every question I have regarding something they do in their profession.
Most people tend to try to take the easy way out on things, and in computers that's an oxymoron. There is no easy way in computers. From installing an OS to learning programming to building or even selecting a computer it is all trial and error.
It's almost like you are being punished for your learning ability (not to mention most of the time by the same people who told you that you were wasting your time messing with computers as you were growing up).
So should us techies feel sorry for them? I say no.
Sucks to be me, sometimes.
Had a similar thing happen. So much for trying to make things easy for 'non-technical personnel' to use.
Someone forgot to realize we have been in a Recession for awhile. I suppose that's supposed to make no difference for the companies that sell to other businesses that have gone under or contracted in size and laid off personnel.
I guess they were expected to just continue growing throughout this whole time with no slowdown. They were supposed to grow at doubled digits and expand even further.
While you make some interesting and seemingly accurate points you also fail to realize that Microsoft has not had to lay personnel off. When the money flows back into the market Microsoft will rise again as well as a lot of other companies that seem 'stagnant' but had been growing previous to this downturn.
If these giants were being severely hurt as you claim they would be laying on the ropes with the loses and the economic downturn at the same time.
On a lighter note Microsoft servers suck ass and they need to stay out of that space imho
But don't discount the fact that there were plenty of people outside Microsoft looking to stick a knife in Marc's back.
Yes and by doing so getting press that bopped Netscape into the spotlight and popped their IPO through the ceiling making himself many millions of dollars...
Yeah, he's a real dumbass, what was he thinking!
I didn't mean it like that. I don't hate Apple, hell I was brought up in the Apple IIe age. The fact is, as a business, if Apples were not the first thing a lot of non-computer users would have been exposed to in school, when they hit the world and got a job their first exposure would have been to MS crap.
Apple would have eventually gone away as new users did not get exposed to it.
The other big push that has kept Apple around and got them exposure imho is their little cutesy designs that seem to appeal to the artistic and, not to be sexist, to women. Women just don't seem to gravitate to some big hunky ugly white metal/plastic square box (and I don't blame em, it really isn't appealing from an artistic standpoint).
In closing, in order for users to stick with a quality product they have to first be exposed to it. Without exposure they don't know it exists and settle for what they know.
I still believe that this is the only reason apple is still around. With their school program donations. People who are not techie geeks like us tend to stick with what they have been exposed to.
A lot of the people I know that have owned apple machines are non techies who got them because that's what they knew how to use.
Anyone else have a comment on this?
Morpheus didn't pay the bills and KaZaa called them on it. Morpheus' CEO sounds like a real egomaniac from his comments in the news and on their website and I'm betting he figured he'd wait til they turned him off and then blame THEM and try to make KaZaa look like the assholes.
Obviously he knew about non-payed bills and the apparent chance of being shutdown otherwise they wouldn't have has a Gnutella client all developed and ready for release within a few days.
If someone at Morpheus is reading this pass it on to your CEO and tell him that treating partners like this doesn't make anyone want to work with your company and makes him look like a prick.
I have no affiliation with either company and am strictly speaking as an outsider having dealt with people and situations like this. Is anyone else sick of this ego crap?