You are implying by your response that these students aren't using the technology to communicate the classroom topic. Rather than having to "hide" under their desks, the typically high school or middle school students using SMS should be *encouraged* to learn the proper uses of new technology.
Of course, with our crippled public school system (another topic entirely), kicking out kids who fail is difficult or impossible.
I would put some responsibility on these 10+ year old kids - pay attention or you might get the boot. If SMS helps you stay on-topic and enhance the conversation with your fellow students, that should be encouraged.
People in the business world multi-task meetings via email and SMS frequently, and there is no reason that high school kids can't be brought into the modern era.
In the case of a local or regional e-commerce website, for instance, the company offering the e-commerce is more well-known and trusted by their customer base than any 3rd party entity could or would ever be.
I would argue that these companies should be able to self-sign their certs without a big RED screen or a warning in the browser.
Some Hong Kong post office is surely no more credible and authoritative than the regional chain of stores wishing to sell their wares to customers online.
I believe browsers should have an easy way of determining when and how the certs were created. An IP address stamp would be as much of a seal of authenticity as anything from Thawte, Verisign or GeoTrust.
Almost everyone in our region knows our company, for instance, but they have no clue what the heck Verisign does.
The problem with "government sponsored" is that SOMEONE has to pay for it. If there is no "profit incentive" for doing innovative research in a for-profit (or non-profit) company, then there isn't a profit incentive for the U.S. government to pick-up the tab. If a consortium of all industrialized nations want to contribute to the pie equally, that might make it a bit different.
"open source" is a good way to look at it. If open source works - then it works for everyone. Government, business - individuals. If it doesn't, then the government can't afford it any better than a company.
I believe open source increases the pie, but we need to move away from our current patent system.
We explicitly tell our clients that if they aren't using encryption, their connection will be used by others. We also tell them that if they are a DSL Internet customer of ours, they are violating their ToS.
For businesses who want to share their connections, they, of course, do NOT want it encrypted. They are paying for this to be the case. There is no splash screen on many of these because the client does not want it to be annoying to their users.
What differentiates a "hot spot" and private use is quite obvious. Because it is so obvious (whether LEGAL or not), it is not fair to assume that people are going to no better. You would be amazed at how many people who have wifi enabled laptops expect (for free) to be able to pop open their laptop and start surfing - everywhere.
They have no idea they are "stealing" - they think it's theirs for the taking. Their Windows or Mac PC cooperates quite explicitly in this fantasy. Since their computer tried to connect automatically (open SSID, no encryption), maybe Apple and Microsoft should do the time.
Finally, since WEP is so easy to crack, I see it only as a matter of time until someone writes a super-easy cracking service that "negotiates" a key for novice users.
My personal belief is, since it is unlicensed, it should be "wild west" rules.
You need to protect yourself as strongly as you can. I always use randomized SSID and keys under WPA2. For clients, I broadcast the SSID because they often wouldn't know how to use it any other way. I also strongly recommend turning on IMAP/POP3 and SMTP encryption when using any wifi. It's so easy to do, it's really stupid not to do it.
The free market outcome you advocate would result in streets lined with poor people dying of curable ailments.
If this were true, we'd have our "streets lined" with old cars they couldn't afford to repair. What you are advocating is free, unlimited healthcare. This can't work because it will take a larger and larger portion of our incomce - unless people are allowed to choose completely for themselves.
"Curable ailments" is a moving target - created (mostly) by our free market, and the expectation of better and better health is something that we don't want politicians making decisions on.
More on-topic, Internet capacity is something that can be controlled by market forces quite easily. Perhaps, in the shorter term, consumer broadband prices will rise. If you're using more, your price should go up a bit - not a lot to think about.
Similar situations happen with water capacity - what's more important in modern society than clean water distribution - but you still pay for usage in most cases!
If I have 20 computers on a single DSL connection (which I do), I should pay more (but I don't) than someone who has 1 and checks email. Partly because of government coddling, I believe consumers have gotten less skeptical and less willing to think about their usage or habits affecting price.
Going full circle to the insurance issue, there is nothing better than the free market to make people make appropriate decisions. Our "employer paid" system allows people to engage in KNOWN bad activities. This reinforces - especially among the young and irresponsible - that they should be able to engage in unhealthy activities. They have every right to do that - if I am not forced to pay for it.
This is an over-simplification. We have much higher immigration rates (as both a percent and as a raw number) than smaller European nations. Nationalizing health care in the United States would be a disaster. Socializing it on a state by state basis would be better but still a disaster.
What we have is mostly socialized anyway - through unfunded mandates to health care providers and employers. Health care providers can't (and won't) turn away emergency patients (insured or not) and employers (thus everyone) has to foot the bill because emergency care is more costly than properly administered care.
We need to get rid of regulation and remove insurance from being an employer responsibility to being a personal responsibility.
Health care in the U.S. is a problem because of layers of bureaucracy - not the "free" market. What we have is far from a free market.
Let Wal-Mart, Target - even large employers provide health care with few to no restrictions and you will see costs stabilize.
Sites with self-signed security certificates are blocked for the unenlightened. Having to pay extortion to a 3rd party to "verify" your identity does nothing to protect the good guys and does little to stop the bad guys.
This won't cost the "big guys" any hard-earned money, but it will likely hurt small ecommerce vendors a great deal. An extra $100-$200 per year is not nothing. The default IE6 settings were fine - a warning - same as FF.
Unenlightened designers will likely advise small clients to go without a certificate altogether. I hope this doesn't make it into the final build, but we'll see.
Many non-profit status organizations have wholly-owned "for-profit" corporations.
Chambers of Commerce and other business advancement non-profits routinely do this to funnel advertising and other "for-profit" revenue into the non-profit to offset costs of programs and staff.
I wouldn't go so far as to throw out a "nothing to see hear", however. These for-profit divisions can make decisions based solely on cash generation that can go counter to the mission of the umbrella organization.
We have to keep in mind that Firefox and kin will quickly become victims of their own success. As FF picks up steam, many of us will (unfortunately) be less motivated to donate cash to further their efforts.
Large companies with agendas will likely be picking up our slack anyway.
By adding a "for-profit" arm, Mozilla may be able to start offering us services that can generate funds for their projects.
They fit in a pocket/purse/whatever, and they cost about $1 each - about the same as a 3.5" floppy but store 100x more: ~200MB. Ximeta/ipod/keydrive solutions are less convenient (cables/free usb port), cost more, and require that the user knows how to use them. You can give a CD to anyone and be reasonably certain they will be able to read it.
So, the answer depends on whether you need to share the data or are using it yourself.
<ipod advertisement>I have an ipod and email, so I have to confess that I don't use them much.</ipod advertisement>
Although everyone can't ever be 100% satisfied with their own list - much less someone else's, it's good to see the Amiga got its appropriate level of respect.
Much more than Mac zealots, Amiga users have continued to utilize their 10-15 year old Amigas for things that matter in our modern world.
Sure, you can play text based games, use ssh/telnet, and "word process" on nearly any PC in existance, but old Amigas can (and still are) utilized for video work.
While I think the Newton deserved a spot in the historical review, the Amiga is truly - like the Mac - one of the forebearers of our modern Gnome, KDE, Mac OS X, and WinXP computing environments:
pre-emptive multitasking
CLI/GUI mix
true-color graphics
stereo sound
co-processing
animation
The Amiga was the more deserving of the two.
I think that's a very "fair and balanced" list (I'd take off the Tandy and replace it with the Newton or the original Graffiti Palm). The reason Amiga zealots persist is only due to it not receiving its historical recognition. This article will go along way to making them feel validated. I feel that Mac OS X shares much in spirit with the original Amiga, and I have long since switched to the new keeper of the flame - on the desktop. Linux and FreeBSD will (forever?) remain the server favorites.
I use a program called palm reader for my Palm. It keeps bookmarks, and it's portable. Many are talking about the issues with PC monitors, but I think a huge ergonomic issue is that you can't "curl up with it" like you can with a book or a magazine.
Anybody in the US who hasn't figured out that the Libertarian cult argument that "if we get government completely out of the marketplace, everything will be wonderful" is bullshit need only look at the US inferiority in the area of cell phones to get the point.
This would only be important if the end were in sight. We are NO WHERE NEAR the end of the development of the "cell phone". Don't say the US is inferior. This is not about who scores the first point. It's about who scores the MOST points.
There is much more innovation now possible in the US because of the LACK of "standardization". Compare it to DOS. Imagine if the US government mandated that ALL PC's ran DOS. We would have gone through the last 20 years at a much slower innovation pace due to this sort of short-sighted standardization.
There are certain areas where government regulation to protect corporations from their own short-sighted stupidity and the public from the consequences is a very good idea.
Such as what? We have government regulations that "standardize" certain aspects of automobile building. This raises the price, and it mutes the ability of the auto builders to innovate with new types of engines, body shapes, etc.
EU regulation forced the national (later private) carriers to standardize on ONE cell phone technology.
Some sort of interoperability might be important. However, the network is the phone. I think standardization is silly. Local number portability is coming through regulation already. Before we stack regulations on the carriers, I think we should see what effect this has.
Once you create regulations, it's difficult to get rid of them. De facto standards emerge.
Slashdot Mirror
You are implying by your response that these students aren't using the technology to communicate the classroom topic. Rather than having to "hide" under their desks, the typically high school or middle school students using SMS should be *encouraged* to learn the proper uses of new technology.
Of course, with our crippled public school system (another topic entirely), kicking out kids who fail is difficult or impossible.
I would put some responsibility on these 10+ year old kids - pay attention or you might get the boot. If SMS helps you stay on-topic and enhance the conversation with your fellow students, that should be encouraged.
People in the business world multi-task meetings via email and SMS frequently, and there is no reason that high school kids can't be brought into the modern era.
In the case of a local or regional e-commerce website, for instance, the company offering the e-commerce is more well-known and trusted by their customer base than any 3rd party entity could or would ever be.
I would argue that these companies should be able to self-sign their certs without a big RED screen or a warning in the browser.
Some Hong Kong post office is surely no more credible and authoritative than the regional chain of stores wishing to sell their wares to customers online.
I believe browsers should have an easy way of determining when and how the certs were created. An IP address stamp would be as much of a seal of authenticity as anything from Thawte, Verisign or GeoTrust.
Almost everyone in our region knows our company, for instance, but they have no clue what the heck Verisign does.
Google Maps? It's less accurate and no more feature-packed than its rivals.
Google does search well, but everything else they do is lackluster. GMail? Yawn.
The problem with "government sponsored" is that SOMEONE has to pay for it. If there is no "profit incentive" for doing innovative research in a for-profit (or non-profit) company, then there isn't a profit incentive for the U.S. government to pick-up the tab. If a consortium of all industrialized nations want to contribute to the pie equally, that might make it a bit different.
"open source" is a good way to look at it. If open source works - then it works for everyone. Government, business - individuals. If it doesn't, then the government can't afford it any better than a company.
I believe open source increases the pie, but we need to move away from our current patent system.
We explicitly tell our clients that if they aren't using encryption, their connection will be used by others. We also tell them that if they are a DSL Internet customer of ours, they are violating their ToS.
For businesses who want to share their connections, they, of course, do NOT want it encrypted. They are paying for this to be the case. There is no splash screen on many of these because the client does not want it to be annoying to their users.
What differentiates a "hot spot" and private use is quite obvious. Because it is so obvious (whether LEGAL or not), it is not fair to assume that people are going to no better. You would be amazed at how many people who have wifi enabled laptops expect (for free) to be able to pop open their laptop and start surfing - everywhere.
They have no idea they are "stealing" - they think it's theirs for the taking. Their Windows or Mac PC cooperates quite explicitly in this fantasy. Since their computer tried to connect automatically (open SSID, no encryption), maybe Apple and Microsoft should do the time.
Finally, since WEP is so easy to crack, I see it only as a matter of time until someone writes a super-easy cracking service that "negotiates" a key for novice users.
My personal belief is, since it is unlicensed, it should be "wild west" rules.
You need to protect yourself as strongly as you can. I always use randomized SSID and keys under WPA2. For clients, I broadcast the SSID because they often wouldn't know how to use it any other way. I also strongly recommend turning on IMAP/POP3 and SMTP encryption when using any wifi. It's so easy to do, it's really stupid not to do it.
If this were true, we'd have our "streets lined" with old cars they couldn't afford to repair. What you are advocating is free, unlimited healthcare. This can't work because it will take a larger and larger portion of our incomce - unless people are allowed to choose completely for themselves.
"Curable ailments" is a moving target - created (mostly) by our free market, and the expectation of better and better health is something that we don't want politicians making decisions on.
More on-topic, Internet capacity is something that can be controlled by market forces quite easily. Perhaps, in the shorter term, consumer broadband prices will rise. If you're using more, your price should go up a bit - not a lot to think about.
Similar situations happen with water capacity - what's more important in modern society than clean water distribution - but you still pay for usage in most cases!
If I have 20 computers on a single DSL connection (which I do), I should pay more (but I don't) than someone who has 1 and checks email. Partly because of government coddling, I believe consumers have gotten less skeptical and less willing to think about their usage or habits affecting price.
Going full circle to the insurance issue, there is nothing better than the free market to make people make appropriate decisions. Our "employer paid" system allows people to engage in KNOWN bad activities. This reinforces - especially among the young and irresponsible - that they should be able to engage in unhealthy activities. They have every right to do that - if I am not forced to pay for it.
This is an over-simplification. We have much higher immigration rates (as both a percent and as a raw number) than smaller European nations. Nationalizing health care in the United States would be a disaster. Socializing it on a state by state basis would be better but still a disaster.
What we have is mostly socialized anyway - through unfunded mandates to health care providers and employers. Health care providers can't (and won't) turn away emergency patients (insured or not) and employers (thus everyone) has to foot the bill because emergency care is more costly than properly administered care.
We need to get rid of regulation and remove insurance from being an employer responsibility to being a personal responsibility.
Health care in the U.S. is a problem because of layers of bureaucracy - not the "free" market. What we have is far from a free market.
Let Wal-Mart, Target - even large employers provide health care with few to no restrictions and you will see costs stabilize.
Sites with self-signed security certificates are blocked for the unenlightened. Having to pay extortion to a 3rd party to "verify" your identity does nothing to protect the good guys and does little to stop the bad guys.
d .com/
This won't cost the "big guys" any hard-earned money, but it will likely hurt small ecommerce vendors a great deal. An extra $100-$200 per year is not nothing. The default IE6 settings were fine - a warning - same as FF.
I always thought the "phishing" schemes which they spend so much time discussing are things like https://login.ebay.com.givemeyourcreditcard.com/ - or even http://login.ebay.com.givemeyourunsecurecreditcar
Unenlightened designers will likely advise small clients to go without a certificate altogether. I hope this doesn't make it into the final build, but we'll see.
Many non-profit status organizations have wholly-owned "for-profit" corporations.
Chambers of Commerce and other business advancement non-profits routinely do this to funnel advertising and other "for-profit" revenue into the non-profit to offset costs of programs and staff.
I wouldn't go so far as to throw out a "nothing to see hear", however. These for-profit divisions can make decisions based solely on cash generation that can go counter to the mission of the umbrella organization.
We have to keep in mind that Firefox and kin will quickly become victims of their own success. As FF picks up steam, many of us will (unfortunately) be less motivated to donate cash to further their efforts.
Large companies with agendas will likely be picking up our slack anyway.
By adding a "for-profit" arm, Mozilla may be able to start offering us services that can generate funds for their projects.
They fit in a pocket/purse/whatever, and they cost about $1 each - about the same as a 3.5" floppy but store 100x more: ~200MB. Ximeta/ipod/keydrive solutions are less convenient (cables/free usb port), cost more, and require that the user knows how to use them. You can give a CD to anyone and be reasonably certain they will be able to read it.
So, the answer depends on whether you need to share the data or are using it yourself.
Search ErrorMSN Search is temporarily unable to process your request.
Please try again in a few minutes.
EID: f:618926422 - 1041:1041:10004:1059
HC: 71d61b13
IBM. Super Bowl. Muhammad Ali. We're mainstream, /. As usual, no need to RTFA to tell us that.
Although everyone can't ever be 100% satisfied with their own list - much less someone else's, it's good to see the Amiga got its appropriate level of respect.
Much more than Mac zealots, Amiga users have continued to utilize their 10-15 year old Amigas for things that matter in our modern world.
Sure, you can play text based games, use ssh/telnet, and "word process" on nearly any PC in existance, but old Amigas can (and still are) utilized for video work.
While I think the Newton deserved a spot in the historical review, the Amiga is truly - like the Mac - one of the forebearers of our modern Gnome, KDE, Mac OS X, and WinXP computing environments:
The Amiga was the more deserving of the two.
I think that's a very "fair and balanced" list (I'd take off the Tandy and replace it with the Newton or the original Graffiti Palm). The reason Amiga zealots persist is only due to it not receiving its historical recognition. This article will go along way to making them feel validated. I feel that Mac OS X shares much in spirit with the original Amiga, and I have long since switched to the new keeper of the flame - on the desktop. Linux and FreeBSD will (forever?) remain the server favorites.
I use a program called palm reader for my Palm. It keeps bookmarks, and it's portable. Many are talking about the issues with PC monitors, but I think a huge ergonomic issue is that you can't "curl up with it" like you can with a book or a magazine.
Anybody in the US who hasn't figured out that the Libertarian cult argument that "if we get government completely out of the marketplace, everything will be wonderful" is bullshit need only look at the US inferiority in the area of cell phones to get the point.
This would only be important if the end were in sight. We are NO WHERE NEAR the end of the development of the "cell phone". Don't say the US is inferior. This is not about who scores the first point. It's about who scores the MOST points.
There is much more innovation now possible in the US because of the LACK of "standardization". Compare it to DOS. Imagine if the US government mandated that ALL PC's ran DOS. We would have gone through the last 20 years at a much slower innovation pace due to this sort of short-sighted standardization.
There are certain areas where government regulation to protect corporations from their own short-sighted stupidity and the public from the consequences is a very good idea.
Such as what? We have government regulations that "standardize" certain aspects of automobile building. This raises the price, and it mutes the ability of the auto builders to innovate with new types of engines, body shapes, etc.EU regulation forced the national (later private) carriers to standardize on ONE cell phone technology.
Some sort of interoperability might be important. However, the network is the phone. I think standardization is silly. Local number portability is coming through regulation already. Before we stack regulations on the carriers, I think we should see what effect this has.
Once you create regulations, it's difficult to get rid of them. De facto standards emerge.