Getting around stuff is easy, so don't make that the challenge. Monitor all activity. If and when the kid goes to a site mommy dearest finds inappropriate, have her actually talk to them. Explain why it is bad.
And when the kid ignores adult advise, just let them know that they are always watched. Fear of discovery, and consequences, should be far more effective than locking down access.
That way they'll only view porn on other people's computers and mommy can sleep at night.
There is an implicit assumption here, similar to the wonky RIAA lost revenue math. The assumption is that a missed advertisement is missed income. This is absurd. I don't like advertisements and never follow them. Indeed, advertising will never motivate me to buy a product, but it can prejudice me against it. In a way, I'm given the product a better chance of getting my money by me not seeing their sales drek.
It would have been far more helpful to include a series of questions that are considered strongly associated with the political dualities AND ask where they thought they stood. It would then be very interesting to see how many people misrepresented themselves given their answers to the questions.
I'm not clear why so many here take offense to use of the term censorship in relation to sanitized versions of original works. It's clearly "the removal and/or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group," fitting the almighty wikipedia's definition for censorship. However, there's a better word for this, if it will make the "only the feds censor" crowd happy; Bowlderized.
Thomas Bowdler, knowing better than anyone else what's good for us, released the Family Shakespear in 1807; you can pretty much guess what he left out. If bowlderized doesn't suit, then Comstockery is also apropos.
To put the action's of Sam Walton's mega mart in the right context, it really needs it's own eponym. I vote for Samitized.
Good point. However, the pro single sign on, anti universal tracking is not entirely incongruous. It's really a question of control and information revealed.
The vilified universal ID is assumed to be attached to all personal information and controlled by an entity with no particular vested interest in that person's well being. Big Brother bells sound and people start thinking of how to get off the grid.
A single sign on is a little different. It doesn't implicitly involved any information that the individual is unwilling to give up. Sure, anyone could find out all about the activity of a single Internet authority, but, depending on the system, the real person behind the identity is still functionally anonymous. If that ID becomes the focus of harassment, the shielded individual can drop it and move on.
As an individual, I don't like having all my personal information unified for the powers that be to scrutinize. As a tech geek, I'd appreciate using one username and password for all my surfing needs. I don't see this as quite the same thing.
While interesting, it's certainly reinventing the wheel. There are lots of methods for doing this found on the site itself ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_do wnload ) including static content already marked up.
Also, as others have noted, the his choping the file into chunks means you're going to loose at least one article per chunk.
I'd implemented this with a compressed file system and maybe some symlinks. Happily, the static content is already there for the taking. Some find and grep on a file system should be enough to do a title search with little overhead. The web server ( for searches from a browser ) need be little more than a daemon, in perl, python, etc, you could do it in less than fifty lines.
The goddamn mission statement of the organization is that they are apolitical! They are neutral to everything except the suffering of humans.
Indeed, that is the stated goal. I believed it and admired it enough to volunteer. I can only speak of my first hand knowledge. Other branches have other styles of management, some even enjoy good reputations. However, the organization as a whole seems to tolerate questionable the branches as long as there is cash flow.
When I say political, I'm talking about the mechanizations of mutual back scratching that can plague any fund raising entity. Kind of like office politics that leaks.
They'll help you regardless of what you think of them.
People will help people. A large organization is supposed to enable that, not inhibit it. Everyone at a site may do there best. However, when the need of such sites is weighted against local favors and not just need, it's simply dirty.
While this looks petty, my sympathies go with J&J. The Red Cross is a political organization above all, any apparent good they do is probably collateral damage.
I volunteered for a rather large branch a number of years ago. While not unfamiliar with the evils of local politics, these guys were ugly. They would have volunteers call up local restaurants to order lunch for the staff and then pull the "but we're the Red Cross, you're just going to donate it, right?" The concern was getting donations and being seen, but any ideas that might do good were seen as expenses to the current money making machine.
I did their website for free, only asking my name be left on as designer until the next redesign. The next redesign took place the next day, it seemed to only involve taking my name off. I wanted to help the braille department, which was fascinating. I reworked some of their forms and spreadsheets, but I just couldn't take the place any more.
On 11-Sep-2001 this particular chapter, within 40 miles of ground zero, refused to mobilize citing distance. Local police and firemen from the same area were moved in immediately. Of course, when the dust settled, the group did take any money given to them. I gave up shortly after that.
If J&J wants their logo forbidden to the Red Cross it's probably more than just a whim. Chances are some group was invoking some kind of J&J association that made the company uncomfortable.
Biometric systems are sold on the premise that everyone has unique qualities they carry around with them. And, while this is true, the ability of even the most sophisticated system to quantify that is still limited.
Quantification usually takes the form as reducing physical qualities to numbers and checking the numbers just read with the numbers stored, usually with a hefty margin of error. It's a guarantee you could do a plastic mock up of a face that would read true and wouldn't fool a myopic five year old.
Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality...
The tone of this is not encouraging.
You ever import something into Word that it technically supports, but only as much as NT supported POSIX? The result is generally pretty craptastic. Who believes that even the simplest ODF document wont look like it was formatted by monkeys compared to the MS endorsed version?
This is absurd. Take a little look at history before you start talking about lions and such.
The idea of privacy is a very, very recent. Most societies have a point in their history where everyone in the community lived together, ate together, maybe even slept communally. Even if there were walls, the neighbors would usually know when Jones' were working on making another kid.
If modern humans enjoy privacy, it is the effect of social change and perhaps overly comfortable living. Certainly not biology.
There is not such thing as "total time spent" on a given site, period. Anyone who claims differently is trying to sell you something. Oh, wait...
Example: I visit two pages, rack up two site hits. One page I glance at, the other I read for five minutes. Which site gets the glance credit and which the time spent? The answer is neither, you just can't know.
You can play with time between hits to the same site, but it's really just guess, after all. I've argued the stateless nature HTTP countless times as I write a custom reports against WebSense data to appease the powers that be. It's kind of painful at this point.
How does WebSense get a magic "browser time?" Something like max session time is three minutes, so three minutes of idle is a new session. Consecutive hits on a site give a timespan, the last hit in the session gets the three minutes. There are a few extra number games, but that's the basics. In the end it's mostly meaningless, but gives supervisors a feeling that they know something.
Wait, I've used this! I think it was WordPerfect circa 1989?
You start out with a blue screen of death and no visual cues whatsoever. You then hit function keys and hold down alt and ctl keys until something vaguely menu-like comes up. No, it's not F1, try again. You then get big massive plastic templates to remind you of all the rarely used keys. Rubber cement it to the keyboard, along with a myriad of other such helpful devices.
Sure, it took weeks to get up to speed and some tasks might never be discovered, but if you found them it was like your own special easter egg. Man, I miss those days of keyboard driven menus...
Some of these are not word dislike, but really the idea behind them. "Cookie"?!? Who the hell doesn't like a cookie? It's the browser function, overhyped by techinical miscomprehension for years, that draws ire.
I find some of the coined words annoying on a purely semantic level, but don't have a problem with the idea they are mean to contain. e.g. blogsphere.
In the other direction, I think "godcast" is an amusing word. However, the idea of recorded sermons seems rather souless and kind of irks me.
> bringing the kilogram into line with other base units such as the metre and the second, which are all defined by physical constants...
One cubic centemeter of H2O is one gram, right? If a "metre" is based on a physical constant and a gram can be derived from it using a physical constant (the mass of water), what's the point of playing with the disco ball thingy?
Most ISPs I've dealt with don't offer the most robust mail clients, anyway. As a result, I usually read mail via an external POP client or have it forwarded. I currently read all my mailboxes through Gmail.
With alternate web clients and desktop options, I doubt this is as much of a lock as AOL's "we are the one true client" style aproach.
It would be interesting to correlate who gets maked as "good" versus other service's spam filters, though.
For, say, 1990. Seriously, what decade are these people living in?
Pirated copies don't come from some idiot wielding a camcorder, they come digital copies usually leaked from within the industry itself. "Review copy" only means "my kid will be torrenting this in three hours, here it comes."
And the minimum wage salary surf shining a flashlight on people fondling each other is now a also a policeman? If a guy holding an illegal recording device looks able enough to abuse a baby seal and isn't bothering anyone, what possible incentive does a theater have to confront them?
This type of legislation is a cry for help on the part of the legislator. It's a sign they're so out of touch it's not even funny.
These are ok for intro tips. Though if the goal is maintainable code I don't know if I'd be doing trivial stuff in C++.
Saying use "#define" everywhere is pretty much like saying use globals everywhere. It's better than using constants, but sometimes not by much. Keeping variables scoped as tightly as possible can help save some pain; globals can add salt to the wound.
Giving counts is pretty useless. Calling it more detailed it like saying you'll release the personal information of the vicitms and just giving a list of nationalities; you really don't know more than you did before, but the feed got you to stay tuned.
I'm at a loss at to why this is even seen as useful, regarless of how you feel about it.
From TFA: Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software - Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life...Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.
Is there a point to this? If anyone "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death", aren't they going to be punished under existing laws? Is it someone's offense more dire if they didn't also didn't have Windows Genuine Advantage as well?
You could make a similar argument against history. Let's forget that nasty Nazi thing, it's really not our best effort, after all. Slavery? Never happens. Inquisition? The church would never do that. The list, unfortunately, goes on.
There is some value in leaving the past behind. However, even if prior actions are forgiven, or seen as mitigated by context, they needn't be forgotten. Everyone's done things they'd rather deny, would maybe pretend never happened. But such negative actions define us as much, or even more, than positive actions. The results of such actions maybe even caused change and growth. It's part of being human.
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Getting around stuff is easy, so don't make that the challenge. Monitor all activity. If and when the kid goes to a site mommy dearest finds inappropriate, have her actually talk to them. Explain why it is bad.
And when the kid ignores adult advise, just let them know that they are always watched. Fear of discovery, and consequences, should be far more effective than locking down access.
That way they'll only view porn on other people's computers and mommy can sleep at night.
There is an implicit assumption here, similar to the wonky RIAA lost revenue math. The assumption is that a missed advertisement is missed income. This is absurd. I don't like advertisements and never follow them. Indeed, advertising will never motivate me to buy a product, but it can prejudice me against it. In a way, I'm given the product a better chance of getting my money by me not seeing their sales drek.
Excellent point on self definition.
It would have been far more helpful to include a series of questions that are considered strongly associated with the political dualities AND ask where they thought they stood. It would then be very interesting to see how many people misrepresented themselves given their answers to the questions.
I'm not clear why so many here take offense to use of the term censorship in relation to sanitized versions of original works. It's clearly "the removal and/or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group," fitting the almighty wikipedia's definition for censorship. However, there's a better word for this, if it will make the "only the feds censor" crowd happy; Bowlderized.
Thomas Bowdler, knowing better than anyone else what's good for us, released the Family Shakespear in 1807; you can pretty much guess what he left out. If bowlderized doesn't suit, then Comstockery is also apropos.
To put the action's of Sam Walton's mega mart in the right context, it really needs it's own eponym. I vote for Samitized.
Good point. However, the pro single sign on, anti universal tracking is not entirely incongruous. It's really a question of control and information revealed.
The vilified universal ID is assumed to be attached to all personal information and controlled by an entity with no particular vested interest in that person's well being. Big Brother bells sound and people start thinking of how to get off the grid.
A single sign on is a little different. It doesn't implicitly involved any information that the individual is unwilling to give up. Sure, anyone could find out all about the activity of a single Internet authority, but, depending on the system, the real person behind the identity is still functionally anonymous. If that ID becomes the focus of harassment, the shielded individual can drop it and move on.
As an individual, I don't like having all my personal information unified for the powers that be to scrutinize. As a tech geek, I'd appreciate using one username and password for all my surfing needs. I don't see this as quite the same thing.
While interesting, it's certainly reinventing the wheel. There are lots of methods for doing this found on the site itself ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_do wnload ) including static content already marked up.
Also, as others have noted, the his choping the file into chunks means you're going to loose at least one article per chunk.
I'd implemented this with a compressed file system and maybe some symlinks. Happily, the static content is already there for the taking. Some find and grep on a file system should be enough to do a title search with little overhead. The web server ( for searches from a browser ) need be little more than a daemon, in perl, python, etc, you could do it in less than fifty lines.
The goddamn mission statement of the organization is that they are apolitical! They are neutral to everything except the suffering of humans.
Indeed, that is the stated goal. I believed it and admired it enough to volunteer. I can only speak of my first hand knowledge. Other branches have other styles of management, some even enjoy good reputations. However, the organization as a whole seems to tolerate questionable the branches as long as there is cash flow.
When I say political, I'm talking about the mechanizations of mutual back scratching that can plague any fund raising entity. Kind of like office politics that leaks.
They'll help you regardless of what you think of them.
People will help people. A large organization is supposed to enable that, not inhibit it. Everyone at a site may do there best. However, when the need of such sites is weighted against local favors and not just need, it's simply dirty.
While this looks petty, my sympathies go with J&J. The Red Cross is a political organization above all, any apparent good they do is probably collateral damage.
I volunteered for a rather large branch a number of years ago. While not unfamiliar with the evils of local politics, these guys were ugly. They would have volunteers call up local restaurants to order lunch for the staff and then pull the "but we're the Red Cross, you're just going to donate it, right?" The concern was getting donations and being seen, but any ideas that might do good were seen as expenses to the current money making machine.
I did their website for free, only asking my name be left on as designer until the next redesign. The next redesign took place the next day, it seemed to only involve taking my name off. I wanted to help the braille department, which was fascinating. I reworked some of their forms and spreadsheets, but I just couldn't take the place any more.
On 11-Sep-2001 this particular chapter, within 40 miles of ground zero, refused to mobilize citing distance. Local police and firemen from the same area were moved in immediately. Of course, when the dust settled, the group did take any money given to them. I gave up shortly after that.
If J&J wants their logo forbidden to the Red Cross it's probably more than just a whim. Chances are some group was invoking some kind of J&J association that made the company uncomfortable.
Biometric systems are sold on the premise that everyone has unique qualities they carry around with them. And, while this is true, the ability of even the most sophisticated system to quantify that is still limited.
Quantification usually takes the form as reducing physical qualities to numbers and checking the numbers just read with the numbers stored, usually with a hefty margin of error. It's a guarantee you could do a plastic mock up of a face that would read true and wouldn't fool a myopic five year old.
Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality...
The tone of this is not encouraging.
You ever import something into Word that it technically supports, but only as much as NT supported POSIX? The result is generally pretty craptastic. Who believes that even the simplest ODF document wont look like it was formatted by monkeys compared to the MS endorsed version?
This is absurd. Take a little look at history before you start talking about lions and such.
The idea of privacy is a very, very recent. Most societies have a point in their history where everyone in the community lived together, ate together, maybe even slept communally. Even if there were walls, the neighbors would usually know when Jones' were working on making another kid.
If modern humans enjoy privacy, it is the effect of social change and perhaps overly comfortable living. Certainly not biology.
There is not such thing as "total time spent" on a given site, period. Anyone who claims differently is trying to sell you something. Oh, wait...
Example: I visit two pages, rack up two site hits. One page I glance at, the other I read for five minutes. Which site gets the glance credit and which the time spent? The answer is neither, you just can't know.
You can play with time between hits to the same site, but it's really just guess, after all. I've argued the stateless nature HTTP countless times as I write a custom reports against WebSense data to appease the powers that be. It's kind of painful at this point.
How does WebSense get a magic "browser time?" Something like max session time is three minutes, so three minutes of idle is a new session. Consecutive hits on a site give a timespan, the last hit in the session gets the three minutes. There are a few extra number games, but that's the basics. In the end it's mostly meaningless, but gives supervisors a feeling that they know something.
Wait, I've used this! I think it was WordPerfect circa 1989?
You start out with a blue screen of death and no visual cues whatsoever. You then hit function keys and hold down alt and ctl keys until something vaguely menu-like comes up. No, it's not F1, try again. You then get big massive plastic templates to remind you of all the rarely used keys. Rubber cement it to the keyboard, along with a myriad of other such helpful devices.
Sure, it took weeks to get up to speed and some tasks might never be discovered, but if you found them it was like your own special easter egg. Man, I miss those days of keyboard driven menus...
Actually, no. No I don't. Not even a little!
Some of these are not word dislike, but really the idea behind them. "Cookie"?!? Who the hell doesn't like a cookie? It's the browser function, overhyped by techinical miscomprehension for years, that draws ire.
I find some of the coined words annoying on a purely semantic level, but don't have a problem with the idea they are mean to contain. e.g. blogsphere.
In the other direction, I think "godcast" is an amusing word. However, the idea of recorded sermons seems rather souless and kind of irks me.
> bringing the kilogram into line with other base units such as the metre and the second, which are all defined by physical constants...
One cubic centemeter of H2O is one gram, right? If a "metre" is based on a physical constant and a gram can be derived from it using a physical constant (the mass of water), what's the point of playing with the disco ball thingy?
Most ISPs I've dealt with don't offer the most robust mail clients, anyway. As a result, I usually read mail via an external POP client or have it forwarded. I currently read all my mailboxes through Gmail.
With alternate web clients and desktop options, I doubt this is as much of a lock as AOL's "we are the one true client" style aproach.
It would be interesting to correlate who gets maked as "good" versus other service's spam filters, though.
For, say, 1990. Seriously, what decade are these people living in?
Pirated copies don't come from some idiot wielding a camcorder, they come digital copies usually leaked from within the industry itself. "Review copy" only means "my kid will be torrenting this in three hours, here it comes."
And the minimum wage salary surf shining a flashlight on people fondling each other is now a also a policeman? If a guy holding an illegal recording device looks able enough to abuse a baby seal and isn't bothering anyone, what possible incentive does a theater have to confront them?
This type of legislation is a cry for help on the part of the legislator. It's a sign they're so out of touch it's not even funny.
These are ok for intro tips. Though if the goal is maintainable code I don't know if I'd be doing trivial stuff in C++.
Saying use "#define" everywhere is pretty much like saying use globals everywhere. It's better than using constants, but sometimes not by much. Keeping variables scoped as tightly as possible can help save some pain; globals can add salt to the wound.
And /. links to that site, that links to that site, that...
Hell, just sue the Internet.
Damn you, Jack Thompson! Now /. want's to side with for Microsoft. It's so very, very wrong.
Please. If the majority is clear they really have nothing to loose by going along with it. With the bonus of free future spin control.
Yeah, I missed the thread I was aiming for. Sorry.
SCO called and wants it's business plan back.
Giving counts is pretty useless. Calling it more detailed it like saying you'll release the personal information of the vicitms and just giving a list of nationalities; you really don't know more than you did before, but the feed got you to stay tuned.
I'm at a loss at to why this is even seen as useful, regarless of how you feel about it.
From TFA: Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software - Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life...Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.
Is there a point to this? If anyone "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death", aren't they going to be punished under existing laws? Is it someone's offense more dire if they didn't also didn't have Windows Genuine Advantage as well?
You could make a similar argument against history. Let's forget that nasty Nazi thing, it's really not our best effort, after all. Slavery? Never happens. Inquisition? The church would never do that. The list, unfortunately, goes on.
There is some value in leaving the past behind. However, even if prior actions are forgiven, or seen as mitigated by context, they needn't be forgotten. Everyone's done things they'd rather deny, would maybe pretend never happened. But such negative actions define us as much, or even more, than positive actions. The results of such actions maybe even caused change and growth. It's part of being human.