I recently attended a talk by Don Norman at the Nielsen Norman Group's "User Experience 2006" conference in London. The world famous usability expert/nutter (depending on your POV) said that his next project will be to come up with more usable product packaging.
He said that the main reason why packaging is problematic is that it is there primarily to prevent theft. I might have guessed. Protecting the customer? The product? My arse - it's protecting the PROFITS that matters!
If this news comes too late for you and you are already feeling the effects of your lower back being gradually compacted to the point where even standing up for much longer than 10mins begins to ache, then act now to reverse the effects!
- Avoid sitting. Stand up and walk around every half hour. More often if possible.
- When you are sitting, try to lean back like TFA says.
- Every night, before you go to bed, decompress your lower spine: lie on your back and put a few books (about 4-5 inches high) beneath your coccyx. NOT the small of you back - I'm talking about the top of your butt-crack: there is a flat area of bone there, put the pile of books there and lie out flat with your arms over your head for a few minutes. If it hurts - then it's doing some good. If you feel a "crack" then even better: that's some tension coming out.
- Turn over and do the "cobra" position. Plant your hands on the floor and jam your hips down to the ground so that your spine bends backwards in a massive curve. Keep this position (and keep your head and neck up straight) for a few minutes at a time.
- If you're not fit, consider also doing some stomach curls (Google 'em) and lower back strengthening routines. The better your musculature is around there, the better those muscles can support your spine and prevent injury by sudden movement. Movement which, if your lower spine is compressed by lots of sitting, will be more damaging.
There is it. Your 5-mins per day spinal insurance policy.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor - I'm (former) back pain sufferer that got rid of the pain by doing the above.
Can anyone put me straight on when in history the US has ever won a significant military engagement without superior numbers or equipment? I'm sure there must have been some example from recent history, but I can't find any.
"...there is still child pornography available easily on the interest), how do you want to handle this problem?"
I don't want to "handle" it because the availability of child pornography on the net is *not* a problem.
Paedophiles are a problem, but that's a matter for traditional policing and law enforcement that is being handled perfectly well in most cases. Whether you can or cannot download child pornography is effectively irrelevant to the problem of paedophilia itself since a) paedophilia has existed for several thousand years before the Internet and b) there is no evidence that the number of paedophiles has increased since such pornography appeared on the net.
What is more of a problem, however, is preventing those people who would curtail the freedoms of the majority in a futile attempt to "solve" the problem of child porn on the Internet. This is an old, old, mistake: moral collapse, crime and social degradation are laid at the door of every new technology and social phenomenon that appears (cars, coffee, freeways...). The net is no exception.
Raise your hand (if you are used to being PAID for your code) if you have time to develop your own version of the ribbon within the scope of your next project?
Before you talk about knee-jerk reactions you might want to at least UNDERSTAND what MS are doing here. They are NOT giving you any CODE. They are simply allowing you to COPY their UI.
No, I love my N73 too, but there are several problems. I'm sure someone somewhere is going to post about how all they want to do is make a call, but that's actually implemented fairly well, although not perfectly. People who want to use the hardware to its full potential are the ones who will suffer! Here are some real issues I've found, and they amaze me
I recently saw Christian Lindholm, head of Yahoo! Mobile (and former Director of Multimedia Applications for the Nokia Ventures) give a talk entitled "Mobile Usability" at the Neilsen Norman Group's User Experience 2006 in London a couple of week ago.
He used the N73 and other recent Nokias as examples of state of the art devices: full-specced in every aspect (memory, CPU, pixels) and a remarkable device because of it. Nokia are selling more cameras than Kodak (or something like that). Yet despite the subject of his talk, he didn't mention the usability of the phones at all. In fact, I was rather amazed at how uninspiring this man was in talking about mobile phones and their use. For example, he described how Yahoo! designed a mobile portal for the UEFA 2006 World Cup - the most popular sporting event on earth. His description of their design process mentioned some user tests in passing - something like they built the system, showed it to some users, made a couple of tweaks, then went live. I later asked him a question about this. To what extent is user testing a part of what they do at Yahoo! mobile? He fluffed it with some meaningless crap about keeping the user in mind when they design. I kept one eye on Jakob Nielsen sitting in the row beside me - I thought his face twitched rather more then usual while Lindholm said this.
My opinon? People who design mobile devices - or at least this guy - are mesmerised by hardware: the size, the spec, the pixels, the memory. They care very little, if at all, about software and its usability. Take a look at the guy's blog: it's all about hardware, battery life, picture quality, etc. Yes, I know he invented the "navikey" (although not exactly a huge mental leap), but I don't care if my phone produces great pictures if it's hard to take them in the first place. What good is a wonderful screen if you're looking at shit software, or hitting the wrong keys or having to remember arcane menu sequences just to turn on Bluetooth?
Designing software for phones is hard (device compatability, shipping cycles, marketing issues etc. etc.) but in my opinon, if people like Lindholm continue to all but ignore mobile usability, things are not going to get much better very fast.
I sometimes wonder when, or if, it will become necessary for ordinary people to understand PKI as part of their everyday lives, in the same way as they understand how to drive, the rudiments of the taxation system and the stock market.
Surely there has to come a time when the issue of identiry theft has to be tackled in some reasonably effective way, not simply buck-passing from bank to customer to insurance provider to government, as is the case right now?
Several years ago, I was a volunteer for an organisation called The Legal Defence and Monitoring Group here in the UK. We were often invited to monitor the police during public demonstrations (marches and the like). Most of us had legal training of some sort, and an interest in public order legislation and its reform following a string of draconian laws passed under the Thatcher government during the 1980s.
Our aim was to observe the actions of the police and record what they did during the demonstration, be that behaviour good, bad or indifferent. We used written notes and (later) dictaphones for this. We did not use cameras (still or video) because we knew that photographic evidence was very problematic in court. It was too easy to challenge on points of detail. It was instead far easier to secure a conviction of police brutality by having detailed (and consistent) written observations of three or four individuals given as evidence by the prosecution. Having evidence that nothing happened at a specific time was useful if the police said that there was an incident, so we used to take notes at 5-minute intervals whether or not there was anything to observe.
When riots happend (and they usually did), I remember you needed a bottle of water to stop your mouth running dry as you had to constantly describe the events around you.
I worked for eight months on a project last year here in the UK being sold to the National Heath Service called "The Map of Medicine." This is a "knowledge support" system which is basically a very sophisticated (and extremely large) set of tree diagrams (or "pathways") that assist a clinician in their diagnosis and treatment of patients.
We conducted user research as part of the design of this system, and one of the things we found was that younger clinicians (doctors, consultants and students) use Google. Some even use Google when they are with patients.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing is hard to say, but it did affect our design decisions.
There is some evidence that two secret agents (code names "zenith" and "fort") were paid by the British to corrupt Japanese intelligence about the US response to Perl Harbor. There is even a bit of evidence to indicate the British had advanced warning of the attack by breaking Japanese codes, but delayed passing on this warning to the US. Without the US in the war, there was a very real chance that Germany and the Axis powers would win the war in Europe. After WW1, the US declared they would never participate in a European struggle. It took Perl Harbor to jolt them out of that opinion and possibly the British to ensure Perl Harbour happend as it did.
BTW, While Yamamoto was of course justified in his fears, it's well to remember that his contemporaries had good reason to be confident: the US has never won a significant military engagement with another country without superior numbers or equipment, and has notably lost several even with that (Vietnam, Iraq...). At the time of Perl Harbor, Japan had completely trashed the Russians (a much larger force) in 1905, and later came close to defeating US troops in the Pacific War despite having far less armaments then they did. By that measure at least, it could be argued that the US is not the most successful military nation in history, but quite the reverse.
Now, when I say the conclusions are largely my own I mean that of all that I have read in political philosophy (a large number of the major works from Hobbes to Nozick)
Hobbes and Leviathan. OK end of thread. It's too painful to watch.
If I had known you were an itellectual Christian (and let me guess, a fan of John Bunyan too), I would never have replied to your post. My apologies.
Note to self: Remember there are people like this in the civil liberties debate, and ignore them.
I went to school with somebody who later became the MD of Sony Music UK. I met him at a mutual friend's new year's party a couple of years ago and we got talking about how he signed Travis, and bout new bands, and the rise of this Internet thing.
I have a great deal of interest in the copyfight, and earlier that year had attended one of RMS's talks, was reading Laurence Lessig, et. al. Naturally, I wanted to know what he thought of all that stuff. As head of one of the most powerful A&R operations on earth, I assumed he would definitely have an opinion.
But he seemed either completely ignorant of the issues, or completely unconcerned. He said something about how their lawyers are "doing something about it" but other than that had no interest. What about copying music? "Oh, we'll sort that out I'm sure." What about the role of the publisher as gatekeeper to new talent? "Er, what about it? We put a lot of investment into choosing acts that will do well. And they do do well."
Something about rabbits and headlights came to mind, so I asked him about where he went on holiday that year (France, it was really nice, you really *must* visit the Dordogne...)
I actually think that the level that it could go up to is pretty high and I wouldn't be that bothered.
The deception's working rather well with you then, isn't it?
There are two big problems with the "reasonable" line of argument that you've swallowed (and please don't try to say it's your own independent conclusion - that would be too painful to watch). I mean the one that's ready to pile a few "theoretical" disadvantages against what are seen as the real advantage of lower crime rates. The problems are these:
1. By the time you reach the point at which you are saying "OK that's enough monitoring now, thankyou" the chances are very high that it will be too late to cut back. History shows pretty much EVERY time a society starts to monitor its population on the pretext of rooting out some problem like crime or terrorism, or whatever, it can't stop. A vicious circle is created whereby each increment seems "reasonable" - but control's dirty secret is that it is not a means to any practical end, it is only a means to more control. And in any case it doesn't permanently prevent crime (although I suppose it might in North Korea's case, but only because there will be nobody left to control in a few years time), and can actually make it worse (recall 30's alcohol prohibition or the current drug war if you need help on that point).
2. The perception of crime and disorder is just that: a perception. I'm assuming you are in your twenties and don't have any experience of the past worth having. What do you think it was like to live in Britain before CCTV, RFID, realtime ID checks and even fingerprint stores - let's say, oh, 1950, or even 1970? Was it complete anarchy? Was it unsafe to leave your house at night? Of course not. It was probably safer, or at least as safe, as it is now. What needs "fixing" about crime is not that it's getting worse (it's not), but that the perception of it is getting more acute through the activities of the media (who need stories to get ad revenue) and the fact that being "tough on crime" wins votes so no politician is going to want to paint a realistic picture because the truth isn't very interesting.
I want you to think about those two things a bit more, in some more ways, when you are saying to yourself "Ho hum, OK I'll give the nice man my iris prints. It's a reasonable thing to do since there are so many bad people around me. And after all - I have nothing to hide."
The article doesn't make it clear (at all) what version of Office is being talked about. It says:
"After that date, any Office Online templates downloaded from within the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications will require validation of legitimacy."
So, erm, just use a version lower than 2007, or what are we saying here?
"Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service"
And how is that different - really - from Office Update asking you for valid installation media as it has always done?
Sloppy article. And tech journos complain when they are wrongly described as lazy idiots?
His biography was included in a collection of influential computing people in some book I've forgotten the name of now. Compared to people like Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, Richard Stallman and others, Simonyi came across as basically a chancer who knew enough about programming to blag his way through life, but not much more. The Xerox WYSIWYG editor was not (even by his own admission) an innovation. Lots of people had theorised such an editor - he was simply in the right place with the right resources to code it. There is no evidence of him having any brilliance or superior ability in doing that so far as I could tell, and as you say, his "legacy" for MS Office in the long term was pretty disastrous.
Oh well, that's history I suppose. Some people just strike it right.
Indeed. I've checked my group, posted questions on the support forums and tried various other things but it's no use. The really odd thing was that when I posted to Ubuntu support, people came back saying "What you complaining about? It's a *security* measure." WTF??
Bugs I can live with, crashing or non-running apps I can live with because there are usually alternatives, but this problem has to be the biggest of a all problems with Linux if you ask me.
I read a biography of Charles Simonyi once. What struck me was that he must be the luckiest man alive after Ringo Starr. As far as I could tell, he was simply in the right place, at the right time, to give us the WORST word processor or all time - and make billions in the process.
I know that Hungarian notation is often cited as one of his great achievements, but really - what has this guy ever actually positively contributed to anything other than a superlative example to coat-tailing?
Will it solve The Problem?
on
Ubuntu 6.10 is Out
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I am not a very experienced or proficient Linux user, but I run Ubuntu Dapper and have been doing so since switching (out of curiosity) from OpenSuSE.
The distro is fantastic, save for one thing that I really, really hope will be cured in 6.10. The problem is so huge, so head-slappingly weird and strange, and so bizarrely counter to the usability of the OS that I am forced, when asked whether I would reccommend it to newbies, to say that I would not. The reason is that Ubuntu (and most other Linux distros AFAIK) mounts all external devices as root.
Plug in your Memorystick: read only.
Plug in your FireWire video camera and use Kino: permission denied.
Plug in your USB still camera and use GThumb to import pictures: read only.
Will Ubuntu 6.10 - as the leading and most devastingly cool Linux distro on earth - cure this for me?
Anyone who builds a business that is dependent on the failure of a single software vendor to produce secure code is, well, asking for it aren't they?
The irony here though is that the single software vendor is a monpolist. So, what do we do? Allow Microsoft to continue to produce broken, sloppy-designed software, and thereby prop up an oligopoly of anti-virus vendors, or let them "fix" their software by incorporating anti-virus measure that they should have had in there all along?
I sure as hell wouln't like to be the judge on this one!
The sheer arrogance, stupidity and breathtaking immaturity of the design of the Acrobat Reader and its supporting products is beyond amazing.
Some of its features are on the face of it quite good. But forcing reboots, nagging the user to pay for inexplicable "enhancements"... shifting vocabulary across releases, random "features" that offer no value to anyone... it's just painful, painful software.
If Microsoft destroy them and in the process make sure that Vista's impending failure results in us all using nice, slick, GhostScript implementations in the future it will not be a MOMENT too soon.
True, but how much is "enough"? I have a electric quartz watch that I have had for about 10 years and have changed the batteries twice. I would regard that as maintenance to the point of it being negligible.
The Sony Reader has an eInk display. Charged plates underneath capsules arranged in a fine grid push either dark or light ink into view. The resulting display is basically the same as ink on paper and needs no back light in the same way as conventional paper doesn't need them either. And crucially, there is no power required other than to change the display. I fully expect that in a few years, eInk will require about as much power as a quartz watch and will have as long a life without a change of batteries.
The Sony Reader isn't going to "replace" books or magazines any more than dishwashers "replaced" washing the dishes, or the car "replaced" the train. It's going to simply find a niche to co-exist with paper. All this huff-puffing about how you need batteries and can't swat flies with an eBook is hokum. DRM is going to be the biggest problem - by far - with this technology. Luckily, Sony haven't carried that particular innovation through with the Reader it seems.
PS: Here's a review of the Reader published on our company blog, which concludes that's it not too bad. Has a video of it in operation too (the Reader's screen refresh is rather slow, apparently), which is more than the NYT can manage.
That drugs vs spam comparison has got to be the most misleading and idiotic analogy of all time! You may was well argue that over-zealous anti-spam measures are like spraying agent orange on mountains in Boliva - what does it mean?
If you're going to make some convoluted point about spam and narcotics use - make it without using some ridiculous (and in this case flatly bogus) "analogy."
"In the end anyone who puts up TV shows on one of these services is going well beyond fair use but all Google should have to do is pull it down when asked"
The CRUCIAL thing here is "when asked." The problem with copyright culture right now is that content providers far too often simply tear stuff down before waiting to see whether the copyright holder wants them too or not. Granted, this is a proactive measure designed to save them from the courts, but if I were the boss of a TV station I'd ask them to keep it up there: if it's old episodes of Gilligan's Island or outtakes from Lost that are pulling the kids into YouTube then I can get those same kids to subscribe to cable (and or some future hi-def format) and watch it there too.
No exposure == no audience == no money. This is the lesson of the long tail.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently attended a talk by Don Norman at the Nielsen Norman Group's "User Experience 2006" conference in London. The world famous usability expert/nutter (depending on your POV) said that his next project will be to come up with more usable product packaging.
He said that the main reason why packaging is problematic is that it is there primarily to prevent theft. I might have guessed. Protecting the customer? The product? My arse - it's protecting the PROFITS that matters!
If this news comes too late for you and you are already feeling the effects of your lower back being gradually compacted to the point where even standing up for much longer than 10mins begins to ache, then act now to reverse the effects!
- Avoid sitting. Stand up and walk around every half hour. More often if possible.
- When you are sitting, try to lean back like TFA says.
- Every night, before you go to bed, decompress your lower spine: lie on your back and put a few books (about 4-5 inches high) beneath your coccyx. NOT the small of you back - I'm talking about the top of your butt-crack: there is a flat area of bone there, put the pile of books there and lie out flat with your arms over your head for a few minutes. If it hurts - then it's doing some good. If you feel a "crack" then even better: that's some tension coming out.
- Turn over and do the "cobra" position. Plant your hands on the floor and jam your hips down to the ground so that your spine bends backwards in a massive curve. Keep this position (and keep your head and neck up straight) for a few minutes at a time.
- If you're not fit, consider also doing some stomach curls (Google 'em) and lower back strengthening routines. The better your musculature is around there, the better those muscles can support your spine and prevent injury by sudden movement. Movement which, if your lower spine is compressed by lots of sitting, will be more damaging.
There is it. Your 5-mins per day spinal insurance policy.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor - I'm (former) back pain sufferer that got rid of the pain by doing the above.
Can anyone put me straight on when in history the US has ever won a significant military engagement without superior numbers or equipment? I'm sure there must have been some example from recent history, but I can't find any.
"...there is still child pornography available easily on the interest), how do you want to handle this problem?"
I don't want to "handle" it because the availability of child pornography on the net is *not* a problem.
Paedophiles are a problem, but that's a matter for traditional policing and law enforcement that is being handled perfectly well in most cases. Whether you can or cannot download child pornography is effectively irrelevant to the problem of paedophilia itself since a) paedophilia has existed for several thousand years before the Internet and b) there is no evidence that the number of paedophiles has increased since such pornography appeared on the net.
What is more of a problem, however, is preventing those people who would curtail the freedoms of the majority in a futile attempt to "solve" the problem of child porn on the Internet. This is an old, old, mistake: moral collapse, crime and social degradation are laid at the door of every new technology and social phenomenon that appears (cars, coffee, freeways...). The net is no exception.
Raise your hand (if you are used to being PAID for your code) if you have time to develop your own version of the ribbon within the scope of your next project?
a spx
Before you talk about knee-jerk reactions you might want to at least UNDERSTAND what MS are doing here. They are NOT giving you any CODE. They are simply allowing you to COPY their UI.
Go to the download page: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.
See any code? Libraries? SDK?
Now do you still want to thank them so much?
No, I love my N73 too, but there are several problems. I'm sure someone somewhere is going to post about how all they want to do is make a call, but that's actually implemented fairly well, although not perfectly. People who want to use the hardware to its full potential are the ones who will suffer! Here are some real issues I've found, and they amaze me
I recently saw Christian Lindholm, head of Yahoo! Mobile (and former Director of Multimedia Applications for the Nokia Ventures) give a talk entitled "Mobile Usability" at the Neilsen Norman Group's User Experience 2006 in London a couple of week ago.
He used the N73 and other recent Nokias as examples of state of the art devices: full-specced in every aspect (memory, CPU, pixels) and a remarkable device because of it. Nokia are selling more cameras than Kodak (or something like that). Yet despite the subject of his talk, he didn't mention the usability of the phones at all. In fact, I was rather amazed at how uninspiring this man was in talking about mobile phones and their use. For example, he described how Yahoo! designed a mobile portal for the UEFA 2006 World Cup - the most popular sporting event on earth. His description of their design process mentioned some user tests in passing - something like they built the system, showed it to some users, made a couple of tweaks, then went live. I later asked him a question about this. To what extent is user testing a part of what they do at Yahoo! mobile? He fluffed it with some meaningless crap about keeping the user in mind when they design. I kept one eye on Jakob Nielsen sitting in the row beside me - I thought his face twitched rather more then usual while Lindholm said this.
My opinon? People who design mobile devices - or at least this guy - are mesmerised by hardware: the size, the spec, the pixels, the memory. They care very little, if at all, about software and its usability. Take a look at the guy's blog: it's all about hardware, battery life, picture quality, etc. Yes, I know he invented the "navikey" (although not exactly a huge mental leap), but I don't care if my phone produces great pictures if it's hard to take them in the first place. What good is a wonderful screen if you're looking at shit software, or hitting the wrong keys or having to remember arcane menu sequences just to turn on Bluetooth?
Designing software for phones is hard (device compatability, shipping cycles, marketing issues etc. etc.) but in my opinon, if people like Lindholm continue to all but ignore mobile usability, things are not going to get much better very fast.
I sometimes wonder when, or if, it will become necessary for ordinary people to understand PKI as part of their everyday lives, in the same way as they understand how to drive, the rudiments of the taxation system and the stock market.
Surely there has to come a time when the issue of identiry theft has to be tackled in some reasonably effective way, not simply buck-passing from bank to customer to insurance provider to government, as is the case right now?
Several years ago, I was a volunteer for an organisation called The Legal Defence and Monitoring Group here in the UK. We were often invited to monitor the police during public demonstrations (marches and the like). Most of us had legal training of some sort, and an interest in public order legislation and its reform following a string of draconian laws passed under the Thatcher government during the 1980s.
Our aim was to observe the actions of the police and record what they did during the demonstration, be that behaviour good, bad or indifferent. We used written notes and (later) dictaphones for this. We did not use cameras (still or video) because we knew that photographic evidence was very problematic in court. It was too easy to challenge on points of detail. It was instead far easier to secure a conviction of police brutality by having detailed (and consistent) written observations of three or four individuals given as evidence by the prosecution. Having evidence that nothing happened at a specific time was useful if the police said that there was an incident, so we used to take notes at 5-minute intervals whether or not there was anything to observe.
When riots happend (and they usually did), I remember you needed a bottle of water to stop your mouth running dry as you had to constantly describe the events around you.
I worked for eight months on a project last year here in the UK being sold to the National Heath Service called "The Map of Medicine." This is a "knowledge support" system which is basically a very sophisticated (and extremely large) set of tree diagrams (or "pathways") that assist a clinician in their diagnosis and treatment of patients.
We conducted user research as part of the design of this system, and one of the things we found was that younger clinicians (doctors, consultants and students) use Google. Some even use Google when they are with patients.
Whether this is a good or a bad thing is hard to say, but it did affect our design decisions.
There is some evidence that two secret agents (code names "zenith" and "fort") were paid by the British to corrupt Japanese intelligence about the US response to Perl Harbor. There is even a bit of evidence to indicate the British had advanced warning of the attack by breaking Japanese codes, but delayed passing on this warning to the US. Without the US in the war, there was a very real chance that Germany and the Axis powers would win the war in Europe. After WW1, the US declared they would never participate in a European struggle. It took Perl Harbor to jolt them out of that opinion and possibly the British to ensure Perl Harbour happend as it did.
BTW, While Yamamoto was of course justified in his fears, it's well to remember that his contemporaries had good reason to be confident: the US has never won a significant military engagement with another country without superior numbers or equipment, and has notably lost several even with that (Vietnam, Iraq...). At the time of Perl Harbor, Japan had completely trashed the Russians (a much larger force) in 1905, and later came close to defeating US troops in the Pacific War despite having far less armaments then they did. By that measure at least, it could be argued that the US is not the most successful military nation in history, but quite the reverse.
Now, when I say the conclusions are largely my own I mean that of all that I have read in political philosophy (a large number of the major works from Hobbes to Nozick)
Hobbes and Leviathan. OK end of thread. It's too painful to watch.
If I had known you were an itellectual Christian (and let me guess, a fan of John Bunyan too), I would never have replied to your post. My apologies.
Note to self: Remember there are people like this in the civil liberties debate, and ignore them.
I went to school with somebody who later became the MD of Sony Music UK. I met him at a mutual friend's new year's party a couple of years ago and we got talking about how he signed Travis, and bout new bands, and the rise of this Internet thing.
I have a great deal of interest in the copyfight, and earlier that year had attended one of RMS's talks, was reading Laurence Lessig, et. al. Naturally, I wanted to know what he thought of all that stuff. As head of one of the most powerful A&R operations on earth, I assumed he would definitely have an opinion.
But he seemed either completely ignorant of the issues, or completely unconcerned. He said something about how their lawyers are "doing something about it" but other than that had no interest. What about copying music? "Oh, we'll sort that out I'm sure." What about the role of the publisher as gatekeeper to new talent? "Er, what about it? We put a lot of investment into choosing acts that will do well. And they do do well."
Something about rabbits and headlights came to mind, so I asked him about where he went on holiday that year (France, it was really nice, you really *must* visit the Dordogne...)
I actually think that the level that it could go up to is pretty high and I wouldn't be that bothered.
The deception's working rather well with you then, isn't it?
There are two big problems with the "reasonable" line of argument that you've swallowed (and please don't try to say it's your own independent conclusion - that would be too painful to watch). I mean the one that's ready to pile a few "theoretical" disadvantages against what are seen as the real advantage of lower crime rates. The problems are these:
1. By the time you reach the point at which you are saying "OK that's enough monitoring now, thankyou" the chances are very high that it will be too late to cut back. History shows pretty much EVERY time a society starts to monitor its population on the pretext of rooting out some problem like crime or terrorism, or whatever, it can't stop. A vicious circle is created whereby each increment seems "reasonable" - but control's dirty secret is that it is not a means to any practical end, it is only a means to more control. And in any case it doesn't permanently prevent crime (although I suppose it might in North Korea's case, but only because there will be nobody left to control in a few years time), and can actually make it worse (recall 30's alcohol prohibition or the current drug war if you need help on that point).
2. The perception of crime and disorder is just that: a perception. I'm assuming you are in your twenties and don't have any experience of the past worth having. What do you think it was like to live in Britain before CCTV, RFID, realtime ID checks and even fingerprint stores - let's say, oh, 1950, or even 1970? Was it complete anarchy? Was it unsafe to leave your house at night? Of course not. It was probably safer, or at least as safe, as it is now. What needs "fixing" about crime is not that it's getting worse (it's not), but that the perception of it is getting more acute through the activities of the media (who need stories to get ad revenue) and the fact that being "tough on crime" wins votes so no politician is going to want to paint a realistic picture because the truth isn't very interesting.
I want you to think about those two things a bit more, in some more ways, when you are saying to yourself "Ho hum, OK I'll give the nice man my iris prints. It's a reasonable thing to do since there are so many bad people around me. And after all - I have nothing to hide."
Public key encryption was invented in 1973 at GCHQ in Britain.
I suppose the commercial victors get to (re)-write the history books then.
The article doesn't make it clear (at all) what version of Office is being talked about. It says:
"After that date, any Office Online templates downloaded from within the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications will require validation of legitimacy."
So, erm, just use a version lower than 2007, or what are we saying here?
"Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service"
And how is that different - really - from Office Update asking you for valid installation media as it has always done?
Sloppy article. And tech journos complain when they are wrongly described as lazy idiots?
His biography was included in a collection of influential computing people in some book I've forgotten the name of now. Compared to people like Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, Richard Stallman and others, Simonyi came across as basically a chancer who knew enough about programming to blag his way through life, but not much more. The Xerox WYSIWYG editor was not (even by his own admission) an innovation. Lots of people had theorised such an editor - he was simply in the right place with the right resources to code it. There is no evidence of him having any brilliance or superior ability in doing that so far as I could tell, and as you say, his "legacy" for MS Office in the long term was pretty disastrous.
Oh well, that's history I suppose. Some people just strike it right.
Indeed. I've checked my group, posted questions on the support forums and tried various other things but it's no use. The really odd thing was that when I posted to Ubuntu support, people came back saying "What you complaining about? It's a *security* measure." WTF??
Bugs I can live with, crashing or non-running apps I can live with because there are usually alternatives, but this problem has to be the biggest of a all problems with Linux if you ask me.
I read a biography of Charles Simonyi once. What struck me was that he must be the luckiest man alive after Ringo Starr. As far as I could tell, he was simply in the right place, at the right time, to give us the WORST word processor or all time - and make billions in the process.
I know that Hungarian notation is often cited as one of his great achievements, but really - what has this guy ever actually positively contributed to anything other than a superlative example to coat-tailing?
I am not a very experienced or proficient Linux user, but I run Ubuntu Dapper and have been doing so since switching (out of curiosity) from OpenSuSE.
The distro is fantastic, save for one thing that I really, really hope will be cured in 6.10. The problem is so huge, so head-slappingly weird and strange, and so bizarrely counter to the usability of the OS that I am forced, when asked whether I would reccommend it to newbies, to say that I would not. The reason is that Ubuntu (and most other Linux distros AFAIK) mounts all external devices as root.
Plug in your Memorystick: read only.
Plug in your FireWire video camera and use Kino: permission denied.
Plug in your USB still camera and use GThumb to import pictures: read only.
Will Ubuntu 6.10 - as the leading and most devastingly cool Linux distro on earth - cure this for me?
Anyone who builds a business that is dependent on the failure of a single software vendor to produce secure code is, well, asking for it aren't they?
The irony here though is that the single software vendor is a monpolist. So, what do we do? Allow Microsoft to continue to produce broken, sloppy-designed software, and thereby prop up an oligopoly of anti-virus vendors, or let them "fix" their software by incorporating anti-virus measure that they should have had in there all along?
I sure as hell wouln't like to be the judge on this one!
Since when did Google Analytics have heat maps?
The sheer arrogance, stupidity and breathtaking immaturity of the design of the Acrobat Reader and its supporting products is beyond amazing.
Some of its features are on the face of it quite good. But forcing reboots, nagging the user to pay for inexplicable "enhancements"... shifting vocabulary across releases, random "features" that offer no value to anyone... it's just painful, painful software.
If Microsoft destroy them and in the process make sure that Vista's impending failure results in us all using nice, slick, GhostScript implementations in the future it will not be a MOMENT too soon.
pulp books do not need electricity
True, but how much is "enough"? I have a electric quartz watch that I have had for about 10 years and have changed the batteries twice. I would regard that as maintenance to the point of it being negligible.
The Sony Reader has an eInk display. Charged plates underneath capsules arranged in a fine grid push either dark or light ink into view. The resulting display is basically the same as ink on paper and needs no back light in the same way as conventional paper doesn't need them either. And crucially, there is no power required other than to change the display. I fully expect that in a few years, eInk will require about as much power as a quartz watch and will have as long a life without a change of batteries.
The Sony Reader isn't going to "replace" books or magazines any more than dishwashers "replaced" washing the dishes, or the car "replaced" the train. It's going to simply find a niche to co-exist with paper. All this huff-puffing about how you need batteries and can't swat flies with an eBook is hokum. DRM is going to be the biggest problem - by far - with this technology. Luckily, Sony haven't carried that particular innovation through with the Reader it seems.
PS: Here's a review of the Reader published on our company blog, which concludes that's it not too bad. Has a video of it in operation too (the Reader's screen refresh is rather slow, apparently), which is more than the NYT can manage.
That drugs vs spam comparison has got to be the most misleading and idiotic analogy of all time! You may was well argue that over-zealous anti-spam measures are like spraying agent orange on mountains in Boliva - what does it mean?
If you're going to make some convoluted point about spam and narcotics use - make it without using some ridiculous (and in this case flatly bogus) "analogy."
"In the end anyone who puts up TV shows on one of these services is going well beyond fair use but all Google should have to do is pull it down when asked"
The CRUCIAL thing here is "when asked." The problem with copyright culture right now is that content providers far too often simply tear stuff down before waiting to see whether the copyright holder wants them too or not. Granted, this is a proactive measure designed to save them from the courts, but if I were the boss of a TV station I'd ask them to keep it up there: if it's old episodes of Gilligan's Island or outtakes from Lost that are pulling the kids into YouTube then I can get those same kids to subscribe to cable (and or some future hi-def format) and watch it there too.
No exposure == no audience == no money. This is the lesson of the long tail.