I believe that studies find Americans work more hours than almost any where else, but are ultimately less productive than most other countries.
Please cite one.
Every study I can recall has American workers at or near the top of productivity metrics. Just poking around the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, every measure has the US near the top (well ahead of Canadian labor, by the way).
Cue the Prince music....Gonna party like it's 1999...
This sounds very similar to a situation with old PointCast, one of the early purveyors of "push" content. They had a similar hubris. Let's see if Facebook ends up in the same pile with PointCast.
So then please explain how the situation would be any different if there were a supoena for you to produce all e-mail that is archived on computers under your direct control (as opposed to those under the control of a third party like GMail)?
Is there a subtle implication that because you have the advanced technical skills, you would be able to securely wipe any incriminating files that you wouldn't otherwise have with a third party? Is it that you keep everything encrypted on the drive, and you are willing to risk jail time for contempt by not turning over the keys?
Not trying to be a wise guy here, it just seems to me that if there is a supoena for your e-mail (to either you or your ISP), you get to choose from one of the following 3 options:
comply
destroy evidence and hope you cover your tracks, risking jail for tampering with evidence
encrypt and then face choice of giving up key or going to jail to think about it
A third party like GMail will just go with the first option. The only "benefit" by being your own ISP is that you get the other 2 choices, both of which go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass Go, and not collect $200.
Wouldn't this also replicate deletes across to the offsite machine in near-real-time? So if one were to accidentally delete a file, or a $HOME directory, or a complete filesystem, then there would be no way to recover from this from the "backup" machines, because their files would have gotten nuked too?
...and no real-time push delivery of messages when they arrive in your mailbox.
Sounds like a "good enough" solution, or a "good for the money" solution.
Typical American technological solution...
on
Polite Cell Phones
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This same story was on NPR this morning, and I listened with increasing incredulity to the ridiculous technological lengths that the American tech crowd goes to find a technical solution to non-technical problems.
There were discussions about having people wear various light and sound sensors so the phone could make an "intelligent" choice whether to ring or not, or going through an extensive training period where the user tells the phone whether to ring or not, and the phone "learns." Like with anything online these days, the topic went to how much private data was the user willing to give up in order to allow the callers to decide whether to make the phone ring or not.
Hello??? The problem here is that people are thoughtless. No amount of tech is really going to change that.
This reminds me of that old joke of the difference between the American space program and the old Soviet space program. The Americans spent lots of money to research and develop a pen that would work without gravity, while the Soviets used pencils. Nothing new under the sun.
I'm not convinced that AJAX is more powerful, just the machines are faster.
I don't think this is the spin on why AJAX apps are more efficient. In the not-so-distant bad ol' days, applications were both:
page oriented
synchronous
So if any one item on the screen needed to be changed due to user interaction, it resulted in a new request to the server for a full page, a full screen refresh, and for the user to patiently sit there blocked waiting for the spinning globe to stop before attempting the next operation.
From a user's standpoint, what is compelling about AJAX apps is that asychronous background requests can be sent off to the server without blocking the user from further interaction with the web page or requiring a full screen refresh. This results in apps which are percieved to be MUCH snappier than their full-page-refresh counterparts.
From a developer's standpoint, what is compelling about AJAX apps is that your server side logic can be much simpler. Each request can be a smaller, tighter API request that does not have to be so tightly coupled with all the form elements and data from the rest of the page. In short, server processing needn't be so "page aware."
I'd be surprised if an AJAX app wasn't much more responsive than an equivalent Java applet on the same hardware.
Win2000/XP run gpedit.msc Administrative Templates - System - Disable Auto play-enabled
Just out of curiosity, I followed your instructions for Win XP. In the same dialog where you can enable "Turn Off Autoplay", there is a clickable tab, "Explain," to give more detailed background on the setting.
At the bottom I spied this nugget:
"Note: This setting does not prevent Autoplay for music CDs"
Sounds like folks are reinventing Avaya Labs' incredibly useful
Libsafe. This is a library that you can set up to preload before libc, either on a process-by-process or system wide basis, and it defines its own set of functions (strcpy, et al) to override those in the standard C library. It is able to detect many stack smashing attacks. When a stack smashing attack is detected, the offending process is terminated, and the administrator is sent an e-mail with copious technical detail.
I am surprised that major distributions have not picked up and run with this great tool. One of the first things I do on any new machine is to ensure that all internet-facing services are being run with libsafe preloaded.
if we (ostensibly) have enough respect for free speech to write it into the Constitution of the country, why does it make sense not to allow free speech in a commercial setting as a matter of course?
Free speech in the Constitution is primarily about protecting political speech. Commercial free speech has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be bound by more restriction.
We routinely and voluntarily surrender certain free speech rights all the time. For example, in order to recieve the benefit of running Microsoft SQL server, its users agree not to publish any benchmarks. If SQL Server users publish any benchmark information without written approval from Microsoft, then they can expect to be sued, and they can expect to lose. Oracle and other competitors have similar licensing agreements too.
Example 2: non-disclosure agreement. In a high-tech environment employees enjoy the benefit of a paycheck and hopefully interesting and fulfilling work in exchange for giving up the right to speak about company plans, products, release dates, and anything else that may be of value to a partner or customer or competitor.
Conclusion: We have free speech, which is good. We are free to relinguish certain free speech rights in exchange for certain benefits, which is good. (The converse is also true - we are also free to choose not to relinquish certain free speech rights by opting out of the percieved benefit, which is good.)
Do we need additional legistlation to allow free speech in a commercial setting as a matter of course? I respectfully submit the answer is no.
Smathers is only paying "the amount the government estimates AOL spent as a result of the e-mails," which is that $200,000 to $400,000. Is our government unable to represent those who suffered significantly more harm than AOL, the people?
2 quick points
Yes, the regular folks who recieve spam were harmed, but it is pretty hard to come up with some number to quantify. Another slashdotter hit the nail on the head in the other story today about how spam costs $22 billion per year.
The restitution does seem rather low - we all would have a self-satisfied chuckle if it had been a huge unreachable range like $200M to $400M. But it is low enough that there is a realistic chance he will actually have to pay off the whole thing off, perhaps have his wages garnished for the rest of his life. That does sound like serious consequences.
Here, folks, I have distilled the essence of this non-article...
The headline shrieks: "Blackberry use 'can damage thumb'"
The true fact of the matter, further down: "He said he had not heard of any cases to date however."
What is really interesting here is that Blackberry brand has attained the kind of status in the collecive mindshare, vis-a-vis IPod, where there is a certain excitement around the product. This brings a lot of hype, but sadly it also brings a lot of junk articles like this one.
C'mon now, it's not supposed to be a difficult challenge.
If you step back and think about it for a minute, the goal here is to generate buzz, get developers to download the product and try it out, and have a small amount of "success" with it. Now all of a sudden, Cloudscape is on the radar of a large number of developers, and is more likely to be considered for use in upcoming projects.
Slashdot Mirror
Please cite one.
Every study I can recall has American workers at or near the top of productivity metrics. Just poking around the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, every measure has the US near the top (well ahead of Canadian labor, by the way).
Wouldn't that be 49 treats?
Out of 100 rounds, students would press A 70 times, each with a 70% chance of a treat. That's 70 x 0.70 = 49, right?
Great! Can you please follow up this post your Social Security number?
This sounds very similar to a situation with old PointCast, one of the early purveyors of "push" content. They had a similar hubris. Let's see if Facebook ends up in the same pile with PointCast.
"PointCast turned into a case study for how not to run a business. In 1997, when push fever was at its peak, the company turned down a $450 million buyout offer from Rupert Murdoch. It subsequently tried to go public, but by that time push had gone sour, and the IPO had to be pulled at the last minute. Finally PointCast was sold last May for a paltry $7 million to LaunchPad Technologies, one of the companies that came out of Bill Gross' Idealab."
<ducking>
So then please explain how the situation would be any different if there were a supoena for you to produce all e-mail that is archived on computers under your direct control (as opposed to those under the control of a third party like GMail)?
Is there a subtle implication that because you have the advanced technical skills, you would be able to securely wipe any incriminating files that you wouldn't otherwise have with a third party? Is it that you keep everything encrypted on the drive, and you are willing to risk jail time for contempt by not turning over the keys?
Not trying to be a wise guy here, it just seems to me that if there is a supoena for your e-mail (to either you or your ISP), you get to choose from one of the following 3 options:
A third party like GMail will just go with the first option. The only "benefit" by being your own ISP is that you get the other 2 choices, both of which go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass Go, and not collect $200.
Wouldn't this also replicate deletes across to the offsite machine in near-real-time? So if one were to accidentally delete a file, or a $HOME directory, or a complete filesystem, then there would be no way to recover from this from the "backup" machines, because their files would have gotten nuked too?
Sounds like a "good enough" solution, or a "good for the money" solution.
There were discussions about having people wear various light and sound sensors so the phone could make an "intelligent" choice whether to ring or not, or going through an extensive training period where the user tells the phone whether to ring or not, and the phone "learns." Like with anything online these days, the topic went to how much private data was the user willing to give up in order to allow the callers to decide whether to make the phone ring or not.
Hello??? The problem here is that people are thoughtless. No amount of tech is really going to change that.
This reminds me of that old joke of the difference between the American space program and the old Soviet space program. The Americans spent lots of money to research and develop a pen that would work without gravity, while the Soviets used pencils. Nothing new under the sun.
Religion can make certain people happy, but tends to make everyone else around them miserable.
I don't think this is the spin on why AJAX apps are more efficient. In the not-so-distant bad ol' days, applications were both:
So if any one item on the screen needed to be changed due to user interaction, it resulted in a new request to the server for a full page, a full screen refresh, and for the user to patiently sit there blocked waiting for the spinning globe to stop before attempting the next operation.
From a user's standpoint, what is compelling about AJAX apps is that asychronous background requests can be sent off to the server without blocking the user from further interaction with the web page or requiring a full screen refresh. This results in apps which are percieved to be MUCH snappier than their full-page-refresh counterparts.
From a developer's standpoint, what is compelling about AJAX apps is that your server side logic can be much simpler. Each request can be a smaller, tighter API request that does not have to be so tightly coupled with all the form elements and data from the rest of the page. In short, server processing needn't be so "page aware."
I'd be surprised if an AJAX app wasn't much more responsive than an equivalent Java applet on the same hardware.
Just out of curiosity, I followed your instructions for Win XP. In the same dialog where you can enable "Turn Off Autoplay", there is a clickable tab, "Explain," to give more detailed background on the setting.
At the bottom I spied this nugget:
"Note: This setting does not prevent Autoplay for music CDs"
+----------+
| 99 | bottles of beer on the wall...
+----------+
Here in the U.S., the standard unit of measure is number of football fields.
Does it automatically do metric to English unit conversion?
First Post
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And he would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids!
I am surprised that major distributions have not picked up and run with this great tool. One of the first things I do on any new machine is to ensure that all internet-facing services are being run with libsafe preloaded.
File that one in the "When your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail" folder.
Free speech in the Constitution is primarily about protecting political speech. Commercial free speech has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be bound by more restriction.
We routinely and voluntarily surrender certain free speech rights all the time. For example, in order to recieve the benefit of running Microsoft SQL server, its users agree not to publish any benchmarks. If SQL Server users publish any benchmark information without written approval from Microsoft, then they can expect to be sued, and they can expect to lose. Oracle and other competitors have similar licensing agreements too.
Example 2: non-disclosure agreement. In a high-tech environment employees enjoy the benefit of a paycheck and hopefully interesting and fulfilling work in exchange for giving up the right to speak about company plans, products, release dates, and anything else that may be of value to a partner or customer or competitor.
Conclusion: We have free speech, which is good. We are free to relinguish certain free speech rights in exchange for certain benefits, which is good. (The converse is also true - we are also free to choose not to relinquish certain free speech rights by opting out of the percieved benefit, which is good.)
Do we need additional legistlation to allow free speech in a commercial setting as a matter of course? I respectfully submit the answer is no.
2 quick points
The headline shrieks: "Blackberry use 'can damage thumb'"
The true fact of the matter, further down: "He said he had not heard of any cases to date however."
What is really interesting here is that Blackberry brand has attained the kind of status in the collecive mindshare, vis-a-vis IPod, where there is a certain excitement around the product. This brings a lot of hype, but sadly it also brings a lot of junk articles like this one.
If you step back and think about it for a minute, the goal here is to generate buzz, get developers to download the product and try it out, and have a small amount of "success" with it. Now all of a sudden, Cloudscape is on the radar of a large number of developers, and is more likely to be considered for use in upcoming projects.
Probably a typo, but that $58 MILLION(!), not 58K.