"Customer service objections"? You're actually trying to imply that Apple has bad customer service?
Have you ever set foot in an Apple store? Have you ever dealt with Applecare?
There really is no analog to the Apple Store for comparison; unless you count shopping for and buying a computer at a place like Best Buy as an equivalent. And shopping at Best Buy is a quite unpleasant and obnoxious experience across the board, their computer section even moreso. I can't think of a place I've shopped in years that's had better customer service than the Apple store.
And while having to call support is never exactly pleasant, Applecare is *much* nicer to deal with them Dell, HP, Compaq, or Microsoft. The only support I've dealt with myself that was better was Oracle's (And that was at a previous job where we had a high-end (ie. very expensive) support contract.).
> Point being, if you assume the iPad and the Xoom (or Playbook) > are the same except that one has some problems then his point is > valid, but if you see them as different products with their own ups > and downs then he doesn't make so much sense.
See, the thing is though that the Xoom and Tab and Playbook and such aren't being marketed and sold as their own unique and different products, with their own unique and different ups and downs. Just look at any given Slashdot article in which both iOS and Android are mentioned. They (And Android devices in general.) are being marketed and sold as: "iPad/iPhone Killers", "making the drastic inroad's into Apple's market share that will make Steve Jobs irrelevant", the hammers that are going to drive the final nails into Apple's coffin and forever rid the world of fruity/gay/stupid/whatever computers.
Given the context in which the Android/RIM/Moto/Samsung crowd choose to frame things; I think it is quite appropriate to point out their shortcomings compared to the iPad/iOS. Any advantages they have will certainly be compared to and lauded over iOS (As you have done in your own post: "my instability will eventually be fixed, the iPad will never have widgets".)
> I agree with you, but how is the end user to know what these file formats are?
How does an auto mechanic know which tasks require a crescent wrench and which tasks require a torque wrench? Part of having a job is being familiar with the tools of your trade. And if your job description includes: "redact classified information from documentation that is to be released publicly" it is your own responsibility to know what tools are appropriate to the task.
And there is a fairly easy computerized analog to your approach:
Make your changes in whatever fancy content generation software your organization uses. Then export and distribute the redacted documents as bitmaps or plaintext or any of a dozen other file formats which do not store all of of the hidden (but easily found) metadata as word or pdf.
> If the user is drawing a black rectangle over stuff the app could be clever enough > to clip away everything that gets overdrawn instead of storing it in the file when doing > PDF export (might help performance too).
But that's not necessarily what the user wants in every circumstance. For example: Just off the top of my head, I know of a couple of websites devoted, in part, to discussion of television shows or movies. The etiquette of those sites. for both users and authors, is to set the text and background the same color when there are major spoilers. And if you want to read them, you highlight the area and the text appears. Another website publishes hint sheets for games... akin to the old invisi-clue books for Infocom games which came with the marker to reveal the hints... where the text and background deliberately the same color so the user can reveal them just as he needs them.
How is the application to know the difference?
Now, maybe there could or should be specialized word processor software certified specifically for dealing with classified documents (Or perhaps it already exists.); which would behave as you described. But your behavior would not be correct or appropriate for a general-purpose tool. And, in this case, the user decided to use the wrong tool for the job. And the fault lies with said user, not the software or its developers.
> They are being replaced by a device that is not > even produced in the USA.
There are a large number of very talented and quite well-paid engineers who designed the hardware and software for that device right down the 280 in Cupertino. There is a similar collection of gainfully-employed talent in Seattle, working on its book-reading competitor. I hear there's also some company in Mountain View that's done work on another competitor for that device; and that they have a goodly number of highly-desired jobs as well.
It's not a hard problem at all in a country where we're taxed on our income and have to file reports on it to the government every year.
Just have prospective jurors bring in their most recent pay stub or 1090 (Or do freelancers file a different form? They can just bring that one.), and pay them whatever their daily would be otherwise; no more, no less. It's not like you wouldn't be able to catch cheats by an automated cross-reference when all the data input is done.
(I know from personal experience that the government goes through old tax returns looking for cheats. I once got dinged for back taxes from a mistake (Yes, an honest mistake... I wasn't trying to cheat.) I'd made on a tax return three YEARS prior which had resulted in my getting a larger return than I should have. So the jury pay verification could be added to that system.)
But did these kids actually and falsely claim to be victims of, or witnesses to, pedophilea and rape? Or were they just kids PO'd at their teacher, engaging in the usual behind-their-back griping and smack-talk that kids have been doing about their teachers since forever, and just using the most vicious and hurtful words in their arsenal?
See, for example, Jerry Falwell's (ultimately unsuccessful... ultimately, as in went all the way to the SCOTUS) lawsuit against Larry Flynt.
Or even my own childhood example: For some reason. my fifth grade teacher decided to take a disliking to me, and gave me a level of grief, that year, unmatched by any teacher I had before or since. By halfway through the year, I hated that man's living guts. And to this day, recalling his name makes me bristle with a bit of loathing. Amongst my friends and behind his back, I engaged in the usual little-kid griping, fantasizing about how I'd get even with him, and name-calling... up to and including calling him a nazi.
Now, do you imagine for a moment that I was actually... seriously... suggesting that he was a war criminal left over from WW2, who had escaped justice, was hiding out in an elementary school in the Untied States, and needed be taken away by the Mossad? You're completely daft if you do. I was just a kid who felt put upon by an awful person, who was lashing out with the nastiest word I could come up with at the time.
And I would bet good money that, in this case as well, there's no real intent to falsely accuse anyone of a crime... that this is just kids being kids and calling their teacher names and using the most hurtful ones they can conjure. "With a computer" or "on Facebook" doesn't change that. And the teachers, the principle, their supervisors, and the school district if this is allowed to stand; are all entirely out of line, and all need to be brought low for this
Well, there was Jerry Fallwell's lawsuit against Larry Flynt; who had portrayed Fallwell as, IIRC, being in an incestous relationship with his own mother. (This in a national publication, not just a friends-only facebook thread.)
I think the reasoning was that because the "accusation" was so obviously an untrue case of mere smack-talking that there was no libel.
Then the facebook posts should have been procured only as part of a criminal investigation by the police after justifying the reason for the search, only with articulatable evidence why said person is a suspect, after a *subpoena*... instead of a warrant... is issued, and Facebook has had an opportunity so consult with the subject and determine if they want their own lawyers to fight it.
For a public employee to abuse his position of power over someone to demand that they log into their personal... instead of private... account without proper judicial oversight is intolerable. Actually, it's also intolerable for a private party to do so as well. But it's especially abusive for a public employee to do so; and beyond the pale when said public employee is one who is placed in a position of care and authority over children.
No matter what the facebook TOS says, what this school did was entirely out of line.
If I were the parent of any of these children, I'd *already* be lining up a lawyer to sink his talons into every vermin involved... the teachers, the principal, their various supervisors, the school district as a whole... everyone. They all need to be brought down over this.
And that's not even considering that schoolkids have been griping about their teachers and calling them names amongst themselves since time eternal. And if children calling you names behind your back is going to get your panties all up in such a wad; you're in the wrong damn profession in the first place. Adding "with a computer" or "on Facebook" to these children's so-called "offenses" doesn't change that.
Even when they're on camera doing it, cops routinely get away with little more than a slap on the wrist for brutalizing and harassing their victims, choke-slamming little kinds into the cement; and even shooting unarmed, unresisting, restrained, people in the back while they're lying prone. In the last case (Oscar Grant) they did so in front of dozens of witnesses, many of whom were recording. And after doing so, they tried to cover up Grant's murder by confiscating the phones and cameras from the witnesses. The only reason that even got out, is because some of the witnesses managed to escape from the police with their cameras... in one more dramatic video even fleeing onto the BART train as the computer automatically closed the doors and took the train off to the next station while the cops pounded on the doors and windows demanding the phones and cameras be handed over.
And what did the police get for a casually-done on-camera mafia-style summary execution of an unarmed and unresisting man? One of them... just ONE... got a two-year (with double credit for time served) slap on the wrist sentence for involuntary manslaughter. He'll be out before the end of this year. The rest got no punishment at all and are still wearing badges and carrying guns.
Cameras are a start. But what we need is nationwide and comprehensive reform on the oversight of the police forces and discipline in their ranks. The police unions need to be broken, the culture of "the thin blue line" and "the blue code of silence" need to be utterly destroyed, "professional courtesy" within the police ranks needs to go away. An independent citizen oversight board should be in place over all departments with unlimited authority to compel testimony and impart administrative punishment up to and including termination (And "suspended with pay" should not be an option.) And the DAs and judges need to be instructed and encouraged to drop the hammer... hard... on officers who break their trust with the public by abusing their power.
Otherwise... without oversight and discipline reform and stringent punishment for officer misconduct; no matter how many cameras you focus on said cops, all you have is a reality show.
Eh? If I walk into any coffee shop in town, half of the laptops will have that large illuminated logo on the back. Most of my friends have iPhones, with the notable exceptions of a couple anti-AT&T diehards (who will probably get iPhones this summer when it's refreshed), the one who refuses to have any smartphone made by anyone, and the one who works for microsoft (and is the only person I know with a windows 7 phone). Why should the "movie world" be any different.
If anything, it's more jarring when a movie or TV show goes out of its way to cover or blur a logo that I know should be there; but the company wasn't a paid sponsor so the producers won't allow said logo to be seen. How many people in real life make sure to put a sticker over every visible logo on something they own, or drink genero-cola-drink instead of coke or pepsi?
Yeah. And do you believe that he's changed his policy on DADT and DOMA now out of principle, or politics? My money is on the latter. It's getting close to election time, and getting rid of DADT and DOMA now serves two important goals for him: 1) It creates a wedge between the hardcore social conservatives and the fiscal types; potentially diluting the power of the GOP on election day. 2) It acknowledges and exploits the fact that the gay community tends to be both politically active, and more affluent than the average. That means votes and campaign contributions.
If this move were truly out of principle and not just politics; it'd have happened on day one of the new administration. Instead; on day one, Obama was endorsing Rick Warren, and his message of hate and discrimination against gays, by having him as the opening act of his inauguration.
Sometimes the goal is not actually security. The goal is to comply with some regulation (PCI, HIPAA, etc.) whose authors did not understand security, but thought that monthly password changes, a 12-character minimum length, and no reuse for the last seven passwords in the history; makes for some fine theatre. Also, substitute "regulation" with "C-level exec" and you get a similar situation.
Yes, I actually worked at a company once that had that password policy.
You don't have to believe in an imaginary friend in the sky who hates teh gheys and the eating of shellfish and of beef on fridays to be religious about something. I've seen people with religious zeal over everything from their diet (See, for example, vegans and the low-carb people.) to their particular environmental cause to their hobby or sport (triathletes) to their politics to their choice of computer operating system. Even some atheists are so fanatical about being anti-religion that they could well be describes as being religious about it.
So just because people don't fall into the same church as their parents that doesn't mean they're not religious and not genetically predisposed towards it.
I don't beleive either that there's a secret conspiracy of terrorists out there trying to bring down aircraft with laser pointers. It's just a daft idea that fails the smell test.
Funny thing is... red laser pointers are so cheap now that on foggy nights (I live near the coast), I occasionally see some of the neighborhood kids playing Star Wars lightsabers with the things, the same way my friends and I used to with flashlights. Green, and even violet, pointers have come down in price online lately to the point that I think it's only a matter of a short time before the kids get their parents to buy them these so they can be Luke Skywalker or Mace Windu as well as various sith. And the police of these days have gotten so priggish that I'd not be surprised at all to hear on the news about then stomping into backyards or kicking down doors with their jackboots after some kid shined his laser pointer at a police or Coast Guard helicopter for a moment while outside playing.
Yes, I *am* something of an Apple fanboi. I'll freely admit that. I think they make great hardware, the best consumer OS available, and the best phone currently available. But I'm also a Google fanboi. They make the best search engine and suite of web services and applications available. Heck, the list of Google products I rely on every day is longer than the list of Apple products. (Though two of the Apple products are my computer and my phone. Those are biggies.) They're both good companies that have good engineers creating good products and should be taking pride in their work.
I'm NOT, however a fan of Motorola. They are NOT a good company and they do NOT have good engineers. They make garbage... cheap junk that's not worth owning. I know... I've owned moto phones before: a StarTAC (It wasn't until the third replacement that I got one that lasted more than a week.), and years later, a RAZR that was a temporary when my old Nokia finally did give out. I plan never to make the mistake again; and heck... the RAZR was a temporary phone that was given to me in the first place. Google should be ashamed to partner with the likes of them. Google has competent engineers. They should use them and not associate with Motorola or their ilk.
HTC isn't quite as bad as moto, but they're still awful. Nokia I used to like. Hell... Nokia used to make some of the best phones out there. Maybe they still do. But they've mostly left the US market after getting patent-trolled so hard by Qualcomm; and they're still clinging to Symbian anyway. So who's left? Palm was bought out by a post-Carly HP. Dell never has made anything but cheaply-made garbage. RIM got complacent and forgot how to compete (like Palm did, back in the day.). So I guess that leaves Sony-Ericsson. And yeah, I've had good experiences with their phones in the past and I wasn't aware that they were doing an Android phone (The only ones I ever seem to hear about are the Motorola and HTC models.). But still, I have a hard time imaging that Google's engineers couldn't do a better job if, like Apple, they made the whole widget themselves. Google, like Apple, has very good engineers... Probably between the two of them, they have the best engineers in all of the tech industry.
And Apple outsources hardware manufacturing to Foxxconn; not design or engineering. If you have good QC people breathing down their necks, it really doesn't matter where the grunt work is done. The important stuff is all done in Cupertino. And yeah, as you say, everyone who uses Chinese manufacturers has the occasional QC issue. But everyone does it and Apple is still a corporation and isn't going to give an edge to the competition by paying 10x the manufacturing cost of everyone else by moving out of China.
And I'm pretty sure that the consensus has been that the iPhone 4 "problem" wasn't a QC issue, but a design compromise. And with the steps and contortions I have to go through to successfully bridge those two antennas and lose any signal; I'll never do that in real usage. (Not the least because the first step is to take the iPhone out of its case.) Going with AT&T as their service partner caused a much bigger connectivity issue than the antenna design ever did. But Apple does seem to have learned from their mistake and appear to be bringing Verizon on board finally. But once again; we're back to Apple learning from their mistake. And the question remains... will Google?
Personally, I think most sensible people will be buying iPhones at least until Google stops outsourcing the hardware to awful designers and manufacturers like HTC and Motorola, and brings all of the engineering for the whole kit in-house to be worked on only by their own, competent, engineers.
It's funny, because Apple made the same mistake. For their first phone, they partnered with Motorola; and the result was that POS abortion, the ROKR. I'm not sure what Steve was thinking... considering what junk phones Motorola makes in the first place. But at least they learned their lesson from that mistake and did the hardware for the iPhone in-house as well as the software.
I know most people have forgotten the ROKR... it truly was that terrible. But somebody at Google should have remembered and raised their hand when the decision to let the likes of HTC and Motorola do the hardware for Android was being made. Google, however, has not only failed to learn from Apple's mistake. They've also failed to learn from their own mistake; and appear to be happy go on failing to learn.
That's a fairly standard move from the playbook of the we-hate-Apple crowd. And it has been for at at least a decade and probably more.
It's never enough for Apple to be profitable or to increase their share value or to have a successful product or even to have a #1 product. If Apple does not dominate and overwhelm the combined share and forces of every other manufacturer in the market COMBINED; then they are a miserable and abject failure, doomed to dwindle into obscurity and irrelevance; and I should toss my Mac (Which I'm an idiot and a sheep and a zealot for buying.) into the trash and learn to like windows.
I've heard it a hundred times and I'm sure I'll hear it a hundred more. And no matter how many times I hear it, I'm going to continue to use the platform I like and buy the products that I like. I've done well so far, and so has Apple.
> And they don't need a gun to kill a bunch of unarmed witnesses, > your axe or whatever will do quite effectively -- the end result is > the same, dead civilians. That's unacceptable to me.
That's an absurd example. For starters, while this criminal is hacking away at the first victim, the others can be running in all directions. With a gun, said criminal can shoot more of them in less time. So without a gun, end result is fewer dead civilians.
And if you take away the guns; yes, there will still be violent criminals. But if you take the gun out of the equation, the civilian has options. For example:
I'm a clerk in a store. Robber enters and is armed with a gun. He aims gun at me and demands money. Basically, I'm boned. Unless I have a gun myself, and I'm a faster draw than Chuck Norris, anything I do besides open the register and hand over the money gets me killed. It's faster to pull that trigger than just about anything.
vs.
I'm a clerk in a store. Robber enters and is armed with a knife. He brandishes knife at me and demands money. Here, I have options. Maybe I bolt for the back room and by the time he can make it over or around the counter I have the door locked and the alarm triggered. Maybe I have a crowbar or baseball bat behind the counter (longer reach) and I shatter his arm. Is it a liquor store? Maybe I smash a bottle over his head. Heck... maybe he's a smaller guy than me. Unless HE is a regular Chuck Norris with that knife; there's a chance of overpowering him, getting to his airway, and choking him out.
Basically, with guns out of the picture the would-be victim has options to make himself not a be victim that are not possible with guns at play. Thus would be, IMO, a very good thing.
And yes, effective gun control is possible. It's even possible to keep them out of the hands of criminals. All it takes is the appropriate political will. See, for example, Japan, Singapore, or Taiwan. Gun crime is all but unheard-of in any of these because they have and enforce effective laws to keep guns out of the wrong hands. There's no magic that happened. They're not inherently better or more capable than us. They just decided that they had the will to fix the problem. Hopefully, one day, so shall we.
That cuts both ways though. I've read about the police's and prosecutors' frusteration at the "CSI effect" and I'm fine with it, despite the fact that the details depicted on the show are sometimes dodgy or exaggerated. And beleive me, I know the frusteration. I know enough science to sit there and kibitz when the show gets things wrong. And, working in computers, I've had to explain that, "No, computers can't/dont actually do that." my share of times.
But juries demanding to actually see hard physical evidence of a crime, instead of just taking the word of some random guy who said: "he done it." is a GOOD thing... a VERY good thing! Peoples' freedom and sometimes their lives are at stake in a criminal trial. And if the government is going to take away either; we should damn well be a whole lot more sure about that than we are now. "Innocent until PROVEN guilty." and "Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer a trial." and all that.
And boo effing hoo for the cop who's PO'd that his version of events is not golden anymore, or for the DA who's seen his conviction ratio drop. It's almost routine now for DNA evidence, for example, to exonerate people who've spent years in prison, falsely convicted after some crooked cop lied in court to frame him and the DA went along with the sham just to get his numbers up. How many innocent people have lost years of their lives because of this? Have we executed anyone because on this? Even person, even one year, is intolerable. (And does anything ever happen to the cop and DA who set someone up for the crime they didn't commit? Nope.)
So yeah... I'm all in favor of anything that conditions juries to expect to see real evidence... even if that expectation is unrealistically high... as opposed to taking the word of a human who may be lying. It's absolutely better than the alternative.
And as a purely practical matter; your friend, frustrated though he may be, still comes out as a winner and should be happy. Said "CSI effect" is also generating more demand for forensic evidence in order to convict. Higher demand means a higher budget and more cool toys for him to play with... and better job security as well.
> "There's nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the > way of a industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team,
Yes there is. There is something very fundamental that's preventing Android from being an industrial design or user-experience rockstar...
They keep outsourcing the hardware for the thing to crappy, two-bit,no-talent, junk-producing companies like Motorola and HTC. And if that's not bad enough by itself; they let these same third-party jackwads tamper with the software as well! (MotoBlur? Bleech!) Gods, it's frustrating to see a company that I know has good engineers and can deliver a good product on its own (Google), allow Android to be dragged down by the dead and rotting albatross carcasses that are those two. And until they fix that problem, and bring the hardware in-house and do it properly, they will never have a "rockstar" and I will never own an Android.
The funny thing is, Apple once made the same mistake. The first time they made a phone, they went the old-fashioned route too; and did the software and partnered with motorola to do the hardware. And the result of that union was that abortion, the ROKR. Apple, at least, learned from that mistake and did the hardware themselves next time when it came time to create the iPhone. But Google is not just inclined to not learn from Apple's mistake; they've continually refused to learn from their own mistake as well.
And that is why Android has not, and likely *will* not, live up to it's potential.
The removal of Israel and Iran from the international stage isn't the problem. The destruction of the region's oil-producing infrastructure is the problem. Plus, the destruction of both nations would create a power vacuum. That's the sort of the thing that could easily lead to chaos as various players try to fill that vacuum... said chaos keeping the oil production from being rebuilt.
That's the sort of thing that can really screw up the international economy. A little bit more terrorism, on the other hand, isn't really that big of a deal. We could have had another 9/11 every year since the first, and you'd still have a far greater chance of being killed in traffic than by an act of terrorism.
It will be fought by small robots... in space... or possibly on the top of a very tall mountain. And the role of the soldiers of the future is clear: to build and maintain those robots.
Increased terrorism vs. nuclear war in the middle east? (Or do you think that Israel will meekly submit to being slaughtered as Iran "wipes them off the map/out of history"... instead of launching their own nukes?)
I think pretty much rational actor would choose the former.
Slashdot Mirror
"Customer service objections"? You're actually trying to imply that Apple has bad customer service?
Have you ever set foot in an Apple store? Have you ever dealt with Applecare?
There really is no analog to the Apple Store for comparison; unless you count shopping for and buying a computer at a place like Best Buy as an equivalent. And shopping at Best Buy is a quite unpleasant and obnoxious experience across the board, their computer section even moreso. I can't think of a place I've shopped in years that's had better customer service than the Apple store.
And while having to call support is never exactly pleasant, Applecare is *much* nicer to deal with them Dell, HP, Compaq, or Microsoft. The only support I've dealt with myself that was better was Oracle's (And that was at a previous job where we had a high-end (ie. very expensive) support contract.).
> Point being, if you assume the iPad and the Xoom (or Playbook)
> are the same except that one has some problems then his point is
> valid, but if you see them as different products with their own ups
> and downs then he doesn't make so much sense.
See, the thing is though that the Xoom and Tab and Playbook and such aren't being marketed and sold as their own unique and different products, with their own unique and different ups and downs. Just look at any given Slashdot article in which both iOS and Android are mentioned. They (And Android devices in general.) are being marketed and sold as: "iPad/iPhone Killers", "making the drastic inroad's into Apple's market share that will make Steve Jobs irrelevant", the hammers that are going to drive the final nails into Apple's coffin and forever rid the world of fruity/gay/stupid/whatever computers.
Given the context in which the Android/RIM/Moto/Samsung crowd choose to frame things; I think it is quite appropriate to point out their shortcomings compared to the iPad/iOS. Any advantages they have will certainly be compared to and lauded over iOS (As you have done in your own post: "my instability will eventually be fixed, the iPad will never have widgets".)
> I agree with you, but how is the end user to know what these file formats are?
How does an auto mechanic know which tasks require a crescent wrench and which tasks require a torque wrench? Part of having a job is being familiar with the tools of your trade. And if your job description includes: "redact classified information from documentation that is to be released publicly" it is your own responsibility to know what tools are appropriate to the task.
Exactly.
And there is a fairly easy computerized analog to your approach:
Make your changes in whatever fancy content generation software your organization uses. Then export and distribute the redacted documents as bitmaps or plaintext or any of a dozen other file formats which do not store all of of the hidden (but easily found) metadata as word or pdf.
> If the user is drawing a black rectangle over stuff the app could be clever enough
> to clip away everything that gets overdrawn instead of storing it in the file when doing
> PDF export (might help performance too).
But that's not necessarily what the user wants in every circumstance. For example: Just off the top of my head, I know of a couple of websites devoted, in part, to discussion of television shows or movies. The etiquette of those sites. for both users and authors, is to set the text and background the same color when there are major spoilers. And if you want to read them, you highlight the area and the text appears. Another website publishes hint sheets for games... akin to the old invisi-clue books for Infocom games which came with the marker to reveal the hints... where the text and background deliberately the same color so the user can reveal them just as he needs them.
How is the application to know the difference?
Now, maybe there could or should be specialized word processor software certified specifically for dealing with classified documents (Or perhaps it already exists.); which would behave as you described. But your behavior would not be correct or appropriate for a general-purpose tool. And, in this case, the user decided to use the wrong tool for the job. And the fault lies with said user, not the software or its developers.
> Moved where?
> They are being replaced by a device that is not
> even produced in the USA.
There are a large number of very talented and quite well-paid engineers who designed the hardware and software for that device right down the 280 in Cupertino. There is a similar collection of gainfully-employed talent in Seattle, working on its book-reading competitor. I hear there's also some company in Mountain View that's done work on another competitor for that device; and that they have a goodly number of highly-desired jobs as well.
It's not a hard problem at all in a country where we're taxed on our income and have to file reports on it to the government every year.
Just have prospective jurors bring in their most recent pay stub or 1090 (Or do freelancers file a different form? They can just bring that one.), and pay them whatever their daily would be otherwise; no more, no less. It's not like you wouldn't be able to catch cheats by an automated cross-reference when all the data input is done.
(I know from personal experience that the government goes through old tax returns looking for cheats. I once got dinged for back taxes from a mistake (Yes, an honest mistake... I wasn't trying to cheat.) I'd made on a tax return three YEARS prior which had resulted in my getting a larger return than I should have. So the jury pay verification could be added to that system.)
But did these kids actually and falsely claim to be victims of, or witnesses to, pedophilea and rape? Or were they just kids PO'd at their teacher, engaging in the usual behind-their-back griping and smack-talk that kids have been doing about their teachers since forever, and just using the most vicious and hurtful words in their arsenal?
See, for example, Jerry Falwell's (ultimately unsuccessful... ultimately, as in went all the way to the SCOTUS) lawsuit against Larry Flynt.
Or even my own childhood example: For some reason. my fifth grade teacher decided to take a disliking to me, and gave me a level of grief, that year, unmatched by any teacher I had before or since. By halfway through the year, I hated that man's living guts. And to this day, recalling his name makes me bristle with a bit of loathing. Amongst my friends and behind his back, I engaged in the usual little-kid griping, fantasizing about how I'd get even with him, and name-calling... up to and including calling him a nazi.
Now, do you imagine for a moment that I was actually... seriously... suggesting that he was a war criminal left over from WW2, who had escaped justice, was hiding out in an elementary school in the Untied States, and needed be taken away by the Mossad? You're completely daft if you do. I was just a kid who felt put upon by an awful person, who was lashing out with the nastiest word I could come up with at the time.
And I would bet good money that, in this case as well, there's no real intent to falsely accuse anyone of a crime... that this is just kids being kids and calling their teacher names and using the most hurtful ones they can conjure. "With a computer" or "on Facebook" doesn't change that. And the teachers, the principle, their supervisors, and the school district if this is allowed to stand; are all entirely out of line, and all need to be brought low for this
Well, there was Jerry Fallwell's lawsuit against Larry Flynt; who had portrayed Fallwell as, IIRC, being in an incestous relationship with his own mother. (This in a national publication, not just a friends-only facebook thread.)
I think the reasoning was that because the "accusation" was so obviously an untrue case of mere smack-talking that there was no libel.
Fine.
Then the facebook posts should have been procured only as part of a criminal investigation by the police after justifying the reason for the search, only with articulatable evidence why said person is a suspect, after a *subpoena*... instead of a warrant... is issued, and Facebook has had an opportunity so consult with the subject and determine if they want their own lawyers to fight it.
For a public employee to abuse his position of power over someone to demand that they log into their personal... instead of private... account without proper judicial oversight is intolerable. Actually, it's also intolerable for a private party to do so as well. But it's especially abusive for a public employee to do so; and beyond the pale when said public employee is one who is placed in a position of care and authority over children.
No matter what the facebook TOS says, what this school did was entirely out of line.
If I were the parent of any of these children, I'd *already* be lining up a lawyer to sink his talons into every vermin involved... the teachers, the principal, their various supervisors, the school district as a whole... everyone. They all need to be brought down over this.
And that's not even considering that schoolkids have been griping about their teachers and calling them names amongst themselves since time eternal. And if children calling you names behind your back is going to get your panties all up in such a wad; you're in the wrong damn profession in the first place. Adding "with a computer" or "on Facebook" to these children's so-called "offenses" doesn't change that.
I agree, but cameras aren't enough.
Even when they're on camera doing it, cops routinely get away with little more than a slap on the wrist for brutalizing and harassing their victims, choke-slamming little kinds into the cement; and even shooting unarmed, unresisting, restrained, people in the back while they're lying prone. In the last case (Oscar Grant) they did so in front of dozens of witnesses, many of whom were recording. And after doing so, they tried to cover up Grant's murder by confiscating the phones and cameras from the witnesses. The only reason that even got out, is because some of the witnesses managed to escape from the police with their cameras... in one more dramatic video even fleeing onto the BART train as the computer automatically closed the doors and took the train off to the next station while the cops pounded on the doors and windows demanding the phones and cameras be handed over.
And what did the police get for a casually-done on-camera mafia-style summary execution of an unarmed and unresisting man? One of them... just ONE... got a two-year (with double credit for time served) slap on the wrist sentence for involuntary manslaughter. He'll be out before the end of this year. The rest got no punishment at all and are still wearing badges and carrying guns.
Cameras are a start. But what we need is nationwide and comprehensive reform on the oversight of the police forces and discipline in their ranks. The police unions need to be broken, the culture of "the thin blue line" and "the blue code of silence" need to be utterly destroyed, "professional courtesy" within the police ranks needs to go away. An independent citizen oversight board should be in place over all departments with unlimited authority to compel testimony and impart administrative punishment up to and including termination (And "suspended with pay" should not be an option.) And the DAs and judges need to be instructed and encouraged to drop the hammer... hard... on officers who break their trust with the public by abusing their power.
Otherwise... without oversight and discipline reform and stringent punishment for officer misconduct; no matter how many cameras you focus on said cops, all you have is a reality show.
Eh? If I walk into any coffee shop in town, half of the laptops will have that large illuminated logo on the back. Most of my friends have iPhones, with the notable exceptions of a couple anti-AT&T diehards (who will probably get iPhones this summer when it's refreshed), the one who refuses to have any smartphone made by anyone, and the one who works for microsoft (and is the only person I know with a windows 7 phone). Why should the "movie world" be any different.
If anything, it's more jarring when a movie or TV show goes out of its way to cover or blur a logo that I know should be there; but the company wasn't a paid sponsor so the producers won't allow said logo to be seen. How many people in real life make sure to put a sticker over every visible logo on something they own, or drink genero-cola-drink instead of coke or pepsi?
Yeah. And do you believe that he's changed his policy on DADT and DOMA now out of principle, or politics? My money is on the latter. It's getting close to election time, and getting rid of DADT and DOMA now serves two important goals for him: 1) It creates a wedge between the hardcore social conservatives and the fiscal types; potentially diluting the power of the GOP on election day. 2) It acknowledges and exploits the fact that the gay community tends to be both politically active, and more affluent than the average. That means votes and campaign contributions.
If this move were truly out of principle and not just politics; it'd have happened on day one of the new administration. Instead; on day one, Obama was endorsing Rick Warren, and his message of hate and discrimination against gays, by having him as the opening act of his inauguration.
Sometimes the goal is not actually security. The goal is to comply with some regulation (PCI, HIPAA, etc.) whose authors did not understand security, but thought that monthly password changes, a 12-character minimum length, and no reuse for the last seven passwords in the history; makes for some fine theatre. Also, substitute "regulation" with "C-level exec" and you get a similar situation.
Yes, I actually worked at a company once that had that password policy.
Not necessarily.
You don't have to believe in an imaginary friend in the sky who hates teh gheys and the eating of shellfish and of beef on fridays to be religious about something. I've seen people with religious zeal over everything from their diet (See, for example, vegans and the low-carb people.) to their particular environmental cause to their hobby or sport (triathletes) to their politics to their choice of computer operating system. Even some atheists are so fanatical about being anti-religion that they could well be describes as being religious about it.
So just because people don't fall into the same church as their parents that doesn't mean they're not religious and not genetically predisposed towards it.
I don't beleive either that there's a secret conspiracy of terrorists out there trying to bring down aircraft with laser pointers. It's just a daft idea that fails the smell test.
Funny thing is... red laser pointers are so cheap now that on foggy nights (I live near the coast), I occasionally see some of the neighborhood kids playing Star Wars lightsabers with the things, the same way my friends and I used to with flashlights. Green, and even violet, pointers have come down in price online lately to the point that I think it's only a matter of a short time before the kids get their parents to buy them these so they can be Luke Skywalker or Mace Windu as well as various sith. And the police of these days have gotten so priggish that I'd not be surprised at all to hear on the news about then stomping into backyards or kicking down doors with their jackboots after some kid shined his laser pointer at a police or Coast Guard helicopter for a moment while outside playing.
Yes, I *am* something of an Apple fanboi. I'll freely admit that. I think they make great hardware, the best consumer OS available, and the best phone currently available. But I'm also a Google fanboi. They make the best search engine and suite of web services and applications available. Heck, the list of Google products I rely on every day is longer than the list of Apple products. (Though two of the Apple products are my computer and my phone. Those are biggies.) They're both good companies that have good engineers creating good products and should be taking pride in their work.
I'm NOT, however a fan of Motorola. They are NOT a good company and they do NOT have good engineers. They make garbage... cheap junk that's not worth owning. I know... I've owned moto phones before: a StarTAC (It wasn't until the third replacement that I got one that lasted more than a week.), and years later, a RAZR that was a temporary when my old Nokia finally did give out. I plan never to make the mistake again; and heck... the RAZR was a temporary phone that was given to me in the first place. Google should be ashamed to partner with the likes of them. Google has competent engineers. They should use them and not associate with Motorola or their ilk.
HTC isn't quite as bad as moto, but they're still awful. Nokia I used to like. Hell... Nokia used to make some of the best phones out there. Maybe they still do. But they've mostly left the US market after getting patent-trolled so hard by Qualcomm; and they're still clinging to Symbian anyway. So who's left? Palm was bought out by a post-Carly HP. Dell never has made anything but cheaply-made garbage. RIM got complacent and forgot how to compete (like Palm did, back in the day.). So I guess that leaves Sony-Ericsson. And yeah, I've had good experiences with their phones in the past and I wasn't aware that they were doing an Android phone (The only ones I ever seem to hear about are the Motorola and HTC models.). But still, I have a hard time imaging that Google's engineers couldn't do a better job if, like Apple, they made the whole widget themselves. Google, like Apple, has very good engineers... Probably between the two of them, they have the best engineers in all of the tech industry.
And Apple outsources hardware manufacturing to Foxxconn; not design or engineering. If you have good QC people breathing down their necks, it really doesn't matter where the grunt work is done. The important stuff is all done in Cupertino. And yeah, as you say, everyone who uses Chinese manufacturers has the occasional QC issue. But everyone does it and Apple is still a corporation and isn't going to give an edge to the competition by paying 10x the manufacturing cost of everyone else by moving out of China.
And I'm pretty sure that the consensus has been that the iPhone 4 "problem" wasn't a QC issue, but a design compromise. And with the steps and contortions I have to go through to successfully bridge those two antennas and lose any signal; I'll never do that in real usage. (Not the least because the first step is to take the iPhone out of its case.) Going with AT&T as their service partner caused a much bigger connectivity issue than the antenna design ever did. But Apple does seem to have learned from their mistake and appear to be bringing Verizon on board finally. But once again; we're back to Apple learning from their mistake. And the question remains... will Google?
Personally, I think most sensible people will be buying iPhones at least until Google stops outsourcing the hardware to awful designers and manufacturers like HTC and Motorola, and brings all of the engineering for the whole kit in-house to be worked on only by their own, competent, engineers.
It's funny, because Apple made the same mistake. For their first phone, they partnered with Motorola; and the result was that POS abortion, the ROKR. I'm not sure what Steve was thinking... considering what junk phones Motorola makes in the first place. But at least they learned their lesson from that mistake and did the hardware for the iPhone in-house as well as the software.
I know most people have forgotten the ROKR... it truly was that terrible. But somebody at Google should have remembered and raised their hand when the decision to let the likes of HTC and Motorola do the hardware for Android was being made. Google, however, has not only failed to learn from Apple's mistake. They've also failed to learn from their own mistake; and appear to be happy go on failing to learn.
Douglas Adams would be proud!
That's a fairly standard move from the playbook of the we-hate-Apple crowd. And it has been for at at least a decade and probably more.
It's never enough for Apple to be profitable or to increase their share value or to have a successful product or even to have a #1 product. If Apple does not dominate and overwhelm the combined share and forces of every other manufacturer in the market COMBINED; then they are a miserable and abject failure, doomed to dwindle into obscurity and irrelevance; and I should toss my Mac (Which I'm an idiot and a sheep and a zealot for buying.) into the trash and learn to like windows.
I've heard it a hundred times and I'm sure I'll hear it a hundred more. And no matter how many times I hear it, I'm going to continue to use the platform I like and buy the products that I like. I've done well so far, and so has Apple.
> And they don't need a gun to kill a bunch of unarmed witnesses,
> your axe or whatever will do quite effectively -- the end result is
> the same, dead civilians. That's unacceptable to me.
That's an absurd example. For starters, while this criminal is hacking away at the first victim, the others can be running in all directions. With a gun, said criminal can shoot more of them in less time. So without a gun, end result is fewer dead civilians.
And if you take away the guns; yes, there will still be violent criminals. But if you take the gun out of the equation, the civilian has options. For example:
I'm a clerk in a store. Robber enters and is armed with a gun. He aims gun at me and demands money. Basically, I'm boned. Unless I have a gun myself, and I'm a faster draw than Chuck Norris, anything I do besides open the register and hand over the money gets me killed. It's faster to pull that trigger than just about anything.
vs.
I'm a clerk in a store. Robber enters and is armed with a knife. He brandishes knife at me and demands money. Here, I have options. Maybe I bolt for the back room and by the time he can make it over or around the counter I have the door locked and the alarm triggered. Maybe I have a crowbar or baseball bat behind the counter (longer reach) and I shatter his arm. Is it a liquor store? Maybe I smash a bottle over his head. Heck... maybe he's a smaller guy than me. Unless HE is a regular Chuck Norris with that knife; there's a chance of overpowering him, getting to his airway, and choking him out.
Basically, with guns out of the picture the would-be victim has options to make himself not a be victim that are not possible with guns at play. Thus would be, IMO, a very good thing.
And yes, effective gun control is possible. It's even possible to keep them out of the hands of criminals. All it takes is the appropriate political will. See, for example, Japan, Singapore, or Taiwan. Gun crime is all but unheard-of in any of these because they have and enforce effective laws to keep guns out of the wrong hands. There's no magic that happened. They're not inherently better or more capable than us. They just decided that they had the will to fix the problem. Hopefully, one day, so shall we.
That cuts both ways though. I've read about the police's and prosecutors' frusteration at the "CSI effect" and I'm fine with it, despite the fact that the details depicted on the show are sometimes dodgy or exaggerated. And beleive me, I know the frusteration. I know enough science to sit there and kibitz when the show gets things wrong. And, working in computers, I've had to explain that, "No, computers can't/dont actually do that." my share of times.
But juries demanding to actually see hard physical evidence of a crime, instead of just taking the word of some random guy who said: "he done it." is a GOOD thing... a VERY good thing! Peoples' freedom and sometimes their lives are at stake in a criminal trial. And if the government is going to take away either; we should damn well be a whole lot more sure about that than we are now. "Innocent until PROVEN guilty." and "Better a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent should suffer a trial." and all that.
And boo effing hoo for the cop who's PO'd that his version of events is not golden anymore, or for the DA who's seen his conviction ratio drop. It's almost routine now for DNA evidence, for example, to exonerate people who've spent years in prison, falsely convicted after some crooked cop lied in court to frame him and the DA went along with the sham just to get his numbers up. How many innocent people have lost years of their lives because of this? Have we executed anyone because on this? Even person, even one year, is intolerable. (And does anything ever happen to the cop and DA who set someone up for the crime they didn't commit? Nope.)
So yeah... I'm all in favor of anything that conditions juries to expect to see real evidence... even if that expectation is unrealistically high... as opposed to taking the word of a human who may be lying. It's absolutely better than the alternative.
And as a purely practical matter; your friend, frustrated though he may be, still comes out as a winner and should be happy. Said "CSI effect" is also generating more demand for forensic evidence in order to convict. Higher demand means a higher budget and more cool toys for him to play with... and better job security as well.
Looks, to me, like a win-win across the board.
> "There's nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the
> way of a industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team,
Yes there is. There is something very fundamental that's preventing Android from being an industrial design or user-experience rockstar...
They keep outsourcing the hardware for the thing to crappy, two-bit,no-talent, junk-producing companies like Motorola and HTC. And if that's not bad enough by itself; they let these same third-party jackwads tamper with the software as well! (MotoBlur? Bleech!) Gods, it's frustrating to see a company that I know has good engineers and can deliver a good product on its own (Google), allow Android to be dragged down by the dead and rotting albatross carcasses that are those two. And until they fix that problem, and bring the hardware in-house and do it properly, they will never have a "rockstar" and I will never own an Android.
The funny thing is, Apple once made the same mistake. The first time they made a phone, they went the old-fashioned route too; and did the software and partnered with motorola to do the hardware. And the result of that union was that abortion, the ROKR. Apple, at least, learned from that mistake and did the hardware themselves next time when it came time to create the iPhone. But Google is not just inclined to not learn from Apple's mistake; they've continually refused to learn from their own mistake as well.
And that is why Android has not, and likely *will* not, live up to it's potential.
*sigh*
The removal of Israel and Iran from the international stage isn't the problem. The destruction of the region's oil-producing infrastructure is the problem. Plus, the destruction of both nations would create a power vacuum. That's the sort of the thing that could easily lead to chaos as various players try to fill that vacuum... said chaos keeping the oil production from being rebuilt.
That's the sort of thing that can really screw up the international economy. A little bit more terrorism, on the other hand, isn't really that big of a deal. We could have had another 9/11 every year since the first, and you'd still have a far greater chance of being killed in traffic than by an act of terrorism.
Nope.
It will be fought by small robots... in space... or possibly on the top of a very tall mountain. And the role of the soldiers of the future is clear: to build and maintain those robots.
Increased terrorism vs. nuclear war in the middle east? (Or do you think that Israel will meekly submit to being slaughtered as Iran "wipes them off the map/out of history"... instead of launching their own nukes?)
I think pretty much rational actor would choose the former.