I just went to a baby class where they demonstrated the power of the parents' voices over that of anyone else speaking to the baby. While two people compete voice wise for the baby's attention, the father will win out over strangers and the mother will win out over all.
The dillusion that bloggers have the power to tease elected officials into resigning is laughable. This isn't news. This isn't even fit for idle.
Fortunately for the rest of us, you're the one that is delusional. Political blogging definitely has a place in making things happen, especially at the hyperlocal level. While this particular article is a bit more than I would expect, I have watched local policy change--on a dime--due to what is said to the public about local government on the Internet.
It used to be that local governance ran in a bubble with open meetings being unattended and no one reading any reports of what happens except for a blurb in the local media--which are heavily influenced by the councilmembers themselves. Now, with bloggers at the helm, a new amount of information and commentary is provided allowing for the public to weigh in and get better informed faster.
So, take some time and check out your own hyperlocal political blogosphere, you might find out some things about the city council that you never knew and probably should have. Good luck.
I hope it really was fantastic. A lot of people put a lot of time into this thing. But this thing is so politicized, I'm not holding my breath.
Ok, I am not a space nerd but I enjoy rockets and think they're cool to watch. That said, I watched the thing take off and it looked like any other damn rocket that has ever taken off before. Personally, while I'm glad we're retiring the Shuttle, I thought they were a whole lot fucking cooler than this rocket. I really feel like we've regressed to the 1960s.
Yeah but those are self-filtered, they aren't done so at the request of some foreign legal department (please note the "law firms" part of the quoted text).
Let me be clear: Corporate America wants to control everything that is said online, and the tools to do it are starting to show up. Companies are starting to employ people whose soul job is to look at social media and respond to negative comments.
You're right, they are responding to negative comments. In fact, I'm impressed with the responses I have received from my ISP (Charter) and SAS. I posted some pretty pissed off comments about Charter last week when my connection dropped (I have business class and I expect it to remain up) and they not only responded to me on Twitter but they also called me to ensure my connection was back up in a timely fashion (I was up before any of my neighbors with residential connections). SAS once contacted me (actually one of their VPs did) via e-mail following a Twitter post expressing frustration about "proc gplot". They wanted to make sure that I got it "to do my bidding".
So while I am sure that what you are saying is true, I have not yet seen corporate America do anything with social media except stop negative comments the CORRECT way--by ensuring the customer is happy. If that sort of customer to company interaction continues in the way it has been, I would say that their attempts are amazingly useful. If they somehow want to change the course of those discussions forcibly or by spamming with positive, I am sure the backlash--especially with those of us that enjoy the way it currently works--will be phenomenal.
A new NASA rocket engine, designed partly in Canada, raises the revolutionary possibility that a manned trip to Mars could take less than three months instead of two years.
[...]
It would take about 39 days to reach Mars, compared to six months by conventional rocket power.
In three paragraphs we go from 89 days to 39 days. So which is it? With that kind of difference, I'm not quite sure it would be any faster than conventional rockets.
Because it doesn't require my instantaneous attention and I get to control when I reply.
Neither does social media. I routinely schedule posts to Twitter for when I want them to go out. I can read the history on my own time. I don't see it as any different from e-mail in that regard.
Stop falling prey to the instantaneous nature pushed by those who use it heavily and you'll be fine.
Pity the blogger removed the advertising, I reckon traffic is about to skyrocket for a few days...
Increased traffic does not generally equate to increased Google Adsense revenue, in fact, it usually lowers it--a lot. If I expect a post to get a lot of traffic (from Slashdot or StumbleUpon, etc) I tell WhyDoWork to shut off ads to that particular post. No sense in serving many more ads that probably won't be clicked.
I was a Sidekick user from 4/2004 until 10/2008. There had been only one 'catastrophic' failure in that time that left Sidekick users without data service for an extended period. Danger produced one of the best mobile devices, which in many ways is still better than anything out there even though the OS and devices that utilize it (the various Sidekick models that exist these days) is quite a bit outdated compared to devices like the iPhone.
I miss my Sidekick immensely. I loved true multitasking, a fully capable QWERTY keyboard, and incredible battery life. Unfortunately it didn't sync well with calendaring software, didn't keep up with music playing, and is now partially controlled by Microsoft. There have been immense trade offs with moving to the iPhone but based on my main reason for owning an iPhone (I ride the bus and enjoy the music/video player and screen size) it was the right choice for me.
That said, "cloud computing" is something which usually works (and did, in the case of the Sidekick since 2002). I don't think that this is a proven warning sign that "cloud computing" isn't as reliable as everyone believes, I just think it's proof that companies need to do a much better job of ensuring data integrity than they could have ever imagined before.
Will I stop using Flickr, Google products, and other future "cloud" devices/software because of this? No. I am smart enough, as a computer savvy end-user, to keep my own backups of my data but I do believe people need to become better educated in what can and will happen as we move to the model we have slowly done in the last 10 years.
Name's flexlm. I see you're new around here, and determined to reinvent everything that was done on *nix 30 years ago.
I see you're new around here and determined to think I give a flying fuck about you and what you know about how computer licensing should work. Thankfully you aren't my target market. My target market is corporate IT, moron Mr. and Mrs. Blow, and anyone else that wants to buy a machine that's priced below $599 and who still want to be able to use the same media, documents, etc that they do everyday on the machines/software we sold to the corporate IT shop that handles their work computer. These people don't care about your ideals, your knowledge of how the world "should" work, and the fact that Linux, Apple, and free software exist at either a markup or insane markdown with a steep learning curve.
What's new here? Not you. So why don't you go the fuck away, before I throw a chair at you, and let me rake these poor douchebags over the coals so my stock options will go up a few percentage points more before a retirement full of picking the legs off of flies, throwing people off the towers of my 16th home in the French Riviera and throwing chairs in my $23 million dollar rubber room.
I disagree. Using pop-ups as the notification method will likely trigger a new round of malware attacks that look like official Comcast notifications, complete with helpful links to download scanner and removal tools.
When AT&T ran things during the ATTBI days they would routinely shutdown connections for subscribers who had known issues (trojans, etc). It would set their cable modem config file to some dummy one which would only get them to AT&T internal network pages and they'd have to call in to get working again--if they fixed the problem.
I don't see why that type of thing can't be restarted. Maybe there are just so many infected machines (and based on my webserver logs from Comcast's IP ranges, I'd guess this is true) that their phone staff just wouldn't be able to handle the volume.
The US is the only country in the world to care about a stupid posession misdemeanor - I could go anywhere else without issue at all..
And yet Canada won't let Americans in who have a DUI (also a misdemeanor here in MN at least and no, I've never had a DUI). I don't agree with the border policies in place in the US but I also don't think your comment is as insightful as others believe it to be either.
There are lots of organizations that will cater to your backward luddism and sell you food full of warts and disease, as nature intended.
I'd prefer that companies not be permitted to sue individual farmers for growing their GMOs just because the pollen spread to someone else's farm by accident.
While any documentary these days should probably be taken with many grains of sugar beets crystals, here is a decent start for why you should not support allowing companies who hoard GMOs to sue farmers: http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food
BTW, just so you know, I eat nearly 100% organic everything and what's not organic is 99% from local farmers who do not use pesticides, herbicides, or GMOs. I ask about my food and I ensure that what I am putting in my family's bodies is the way it should be--natural. That and I am ensuring that the farmer who lives 12 miles down from my house can continue to afford to live there, on his fairly large piece of property for the area, instead of lining the pockets of Big Farm.
If the Iranian government wants to completely exterminate its' constituency, let it. If the Arabs and Jews want to mutually remove each other from human memory, let them.
I suppose that is the Iranian government's *own* right but it's not what the majority consider a global right and thus the concern. Do you believe that it's acceptable for the head of a household in the next town to kill all but themselves and one other family member to cleanse their household?
While the majority of us would probably say that's not ok, I really want to know if that's ok to you.
Depending on whether he has more proof than, "Hey! That super-generic background texture looks just like a really super-generic background texture I derived from existing work myself!" they might have a case.
I think we were talking more in general than you are here. If someone is 100% confident in the fact that they are being wronged, I just don't see what the problem is with taking the information public.
Why didn't he just email them and ask them either not to use his pictures, or to pay him for them?
Because sometimes even when you do both of those things, you get nowhere fast. Twitter is something that a lot of people utilize and it's a good way to go about expressing your frustration and getting the word out to a lot of people (including the offender) quickly.
Any place that I have worked, the IT department is understaffed, overworked, and operate at what the other departments feel is a sub-par level. Because of this, it's easier to train people in-house or bring in an external support contract to handle the problems. Obviously this isn't how it works everywhere but in the last three institutions I have worked at (in the last 7 years) that's what it's been like.
The biggest reason is the fact that there weren't expensive support contracts available for purchase. Employee turnover always exists and generally only one or maybe two people knew how to operate any particular system in the places where I have worked. Expensive support contracts allowed for someone else to do deal w/the turnover problem and kept it out of the hands of the on-site departments.
Am I the only one who always gives their birthday as 01/01/1970 and their zip code as 20500?
I use 1/1/1979 (it's closer to my real age) and 90210 instead. I get a lot of crosseyed looks and many times the cashier (or whatever human I'm dealing with) will end up entering in a local zip code instead but people are no longer arguing w/me about what I choose to provide them when pressured for information (I always politely reply, "no thanks," when asked for that type of information but will give them false shit when they ask again and whine that they'll be fired).
Why would I give 'em the right numbers? They're lucky I even allow them to have rough demographic data.
Because the majority of people have absolutely no problems handing over any and all information they're prompted for up to and including their e-mail address, phone number or even SSN! Because most people don't even blink, those of us that don't feel like it should be anyone's business (like the scanning of IDs at liquor stores or bars to check age--there is a birthdate listed on IDs for a fucking reason people--not that they can scan my rare earth magnet swiped ID anyway) are looked at like assholes when we refuse to provide information that no one really needs anyway.
Got a citation to support this? From what I see, homeschooled kids tend to be better-prepared academically than their public-schooled counterparts.
Thank you for mentionally academically and not just leaving it out. Being academically prepared is very important for college-aged kids, no doubt but what's even more important--especially as they leave college and enter the workforce, is being socially prepared. Unfortunately, many home schooled individuals are severely lacking in this department.
I work in higher ed and when I was still working at a brick and mortar school I watched in amazement at the number of homeschooled teenagers who would be dragged to the admissions counter while their parents attempted to do everything for them. While this wasn't unique to home schooled kids, it was disproportionate. I will go on to give an extreme example: a young man, home schooled, had his mother attend all the same classes with him and would even eat lunch with her. For whatever reason she was not there one day and he stared blankly up at the cafeteria menu, frozen in indecision at his 5 choices for lunch.
Helicopter parents are bad. Home schoolers coupled with them are really bad.
"Unschooling: For those kids who aspire to be the dish washers of the future"
I know plenty of dishwashers who graduated high school and several, in this economy, have college degrees. At what point do we say that no matter how you progress through school, there may come a time when you are at the bottom rung for one reason or another?
Do I think that "unschooling" is a good idea? Not particularly, especially after watching a documentary entitled Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (you can watch it there free). This particular documentary had a portion where a father was raising his family on the Mesa in a camper. Their education included all the things that were supposedly important like measuring things, shooting shit, and watching the others on the Mesa smoke lots of pot. I'm sure that "unschooling" done properly and with the right child could be successful--unfortunately I have a feeling that the majority of those that think it would be the best option, are probably better off going back to school themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to say something like, "thanks for beginning as a faster and better alternative but ending up just as bloated and crappy as we are" cake.
I just went to a baby class where they demonstrated the power of the parents' voices over that of anyone else speaking to the baby. While two people compete voice wise for the baby's attention, the father will win out over strangers and the mother will win out over all.
The dillusion that bloggers have the power to tease elected officials into resigning is laughable. This isn't news. This isn't even fit for idle.
Fortunately for the rest of us, you're the one that is delusional. Political blogging definitely has a place in making things happen, especially at the hyperlocal level. While this particular article is a bit more than I would expect, I have watched local policy change--on a dime--due to what is said to the public about local government on the Internet.
It used to be that local governance ran in a bubble with open meetings being unattended and no one reading any reports of what happens except for a blurb in the local media--which are heavily influenced by the councilmembers themselves. Now, with bloggers at the helm, a new amount of information and commentary is provided allowing for the public to weigh in and get better informed faster.
So, take some time and check out your own hyperlocal political blogosphere, you might find out some things about the city council that you never knew and probably should have. Good luck.
I hope it really was fantastic. A lot of people put a lot of time into this thing. But this thing is so politicized, I'm not holding my breath.
Ok, I am not a space nerd but I enjoy rockets and think they're cool to watch. That said, I watched the thing take off and it looked like any other damn rocket that has ever taken off before. Personally, while I'm glad we're retiring the Shuttle, I thought they were a whole lot fucking cooler than this rocket. I really feel like we've regressed to the 1960s.
Yeah but those are self-filtered, they aren't done so at the request of some foreign legal department (please note the "law firms" part of the quoted text).
From: http://thepiratebay.org/legal
I wonder if that still applies these days.
Let me be clear: Corporate America wants to control everything that is said online, and the tools to do it are starting to show up. Companies are starting to employ people whose soul job is to look at social media and respond to negative comments.
You're right, they are responding to negative comments. In fact, I'm impressed with the responses I have received from my ISP (Charter) and SAS. I posted some pretty pissed off comments about Charter last week when my connection dropped (I have business class and I expect it to remain up) and they not only responded to me on Twitter but they also called me to ensure my connection was back up in a timely fashion (I was up before any of my neighbors with residential connections). SAS once contacted me (actually one of their VPs did) via e-mail following a Twitter post expressing frustration about "proc gplot". They wanted to make sure that I got it "to do my bidding".
So while I am sure that what you are saying is true, I have not yet seen corporate America do anything with social media except stop negative comments the CORRECT way--by ensuring the customer is happy. If that sort of customer to company interaction continues in the way it has been, I would say that their attempts are amazingly useful. If they somehow want to change the course of those discussions forcibly or by spamming with positive, I am sure the backlash--especially with those of us that enjoy the way it currently works--will be phenomenal.
Thanks everyone. I'm dumb. I blame the 800 miles of driving in the last 24 hours.
From the article:
A new NASA rocket engine, designed partly in Canada, raises the revolutionary possibility that a manned trip to Mars could take less than three months instead of two years.
[...]
It would take about 39 days to reach Mars, compared to six months by conventional rocket power.
In three paragraphs we go from 89 days to 39 days. So which is it? With that kind of difference, I'm not quite sure it would be any faster than conventional rockets.
Because it doesn't require my instantaneous attention and I get to control when I reply.
Neither does social media. I routinely schedule posts to Twitter for when I want them to go out. I can read the history on my own time. I don't see it as any different from e-mail in that regard.
Stop falling prey to the instantaneous nature pushed by those who use it heavily and you'll be fine.
Pity the blogger removed the advertising, I reckon traffic is about to skyrocket for a few days...
Increased traffic does not generally equate to increased Google Adsense revenue, in fact, it usually lowers it--a lot. If I expect a post to get a lot of traffic (from Slashdot or StumbleUpon, etc) I tell WhyDoWork to shut off ads to that particular post. No sense in serving many more ads that probably won't be clicked.
Didn't that throw up any red flags for ANYONE?
I was a Sidekick user from 4/2004 until 10/2008. There had been only one 'catastrophic' failure in that time that left Sidekick users without data service for an extended period. Danger produced one of the best mobile devices, which in many ways is still better than anything out there even though the OS and devices that utilize it (the various Sidekick models that exist these days) is quite a bit outdated compared to devices like the iPhone.
I miss my Sidekick immensely. I loved true multitasking, a fully capable QWERTY keyboard, and incredible battery life. Unfortunately it didn't sync well with calendaring software, didn't keep up with music playing, and is now partially controlled by Microsoft. There have been immense trade offs with moving to the iPhone but based on my main reason for owning an iPhone (I ride the bus and enjoy the music/video player and screen size) it was the right choice for me.
That said, "cloud computing" is something which usually works (and did, in the case of the Sidekick since 2002). I don't think that this is a proven warning sign that "cloud computing" isn't as reliable as everyone believes, I just think it's proof that companies need to do a much better job of ensuring data integrity than they could have ever imagined before.
Will I stop using Flickr, Google products, and other future "cloud" devices/software because of this? No. I am smart enough, as a computer savvy end-user, to keep my own backups of my data but I do believe people need to become better educated in what can and will happen as we move to the model we have slowly done in the last 10 years.
Name's flexlm. I see you're new around here, and determined to reinvent everything that was done on *nix 30 years ago.
I see you're new around here and determined to think I give a flying fuck about you and what you know about how computer licensing should work. Thankfully you aren't my target market. My target market is corporate IT, moron Mr. and Mrs. Blow, and anyone else that wants to buy a machine that's priced below $599 and who still want to be able to use the same media, documents, etc that they do everyday on the machines/software we sold to the corporate IT shop that handles their work computer. These people don't care about your ideals, your knowledge of how the world "should" work, and the fact that Linux, Apple, and free software exist at either a markup or insane markdown with a steep learning curve.
What's new here? Not you. So why don't you go the fuck away, before I throw a chair at you, and let me rake these poor douchebags over the coals so my stock options will go up a few percentage points more before a retirement full of picking the legs off of flies, throwing people off the towers of my 16th home in the French Riviera and throwing chairs in my $23 million dollar rubber room.
Thanks,
Steve Ballmer.
I disagree. Using pop-ups as the notification method will likely trigger a new round of malware attacks that look like official Comcast notifications, complete with helpful links to download scanner and removal tools.
When AT&T ran things during the ATTBI days they would routinely shutdown connections for subscribers who had known issues (trojans, etc). It would set their cable modem config file to some dummy one which would only get them to AT&T internal network pages and they'd have to call in to get working again--if they fixed the problem.
I don't see why that type of thing can't be restarted. Maybe there are just so many infected machines (and based on my webserver logs from Comcast's IP ranges, I'd guess this is true) that their phone staff just wouldn't be able to handle the volume.
The US is the only country in the world to care about a stupid posession misdemeanor - I could go anywhere else without issue at all..
And yet Canada won't let Americans in who have a DUI (also a misdemeanor here in MN at least and no, I've never had a DUI). I don't agree with the border policies in place in the US but I also don't think your comment is as insightful as others believe it to be either.
There are lots of organizations that will cater to your backward luddism and sell you food full of warts and disease, as nature intended.
I'd prefer that companies not be permitted to sue individual farmers for growing their GMOs just because the pollen spread to someone else's farm by accident.
While any documentary these days should probably be taken with many grains of sugar beets crystals, here is a decent start for why you should not support allowing companies who hoard GMOs to sue farmers: http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food
BTW, just so you know, I eat nearly 100% organic everything and what's not organic is 99% from local farmers who do not use pesticides, herbicides, or GMOs. I ask about my food and I ensure that what I am putting in my family's bodies is the way it should be--natural. That and I am ensuring that the farmer who lives 12 miles down from my house can continue to afford to live there, on his fairly large piece of property for the area, instead of lining the pockets of Big Farm.
If the Iranian government wants to completely exterminate its' constituency, let it. If the Arabs and Jews want to mutually remove each other from human memory, let them.
I suppose that is the Iranian government's *own* right but it's not what the majority consider a global right and thus the concern. Do you believe that it's acceptable for the head of a household in the next town to kill all but themselves and one other family member to cleanse their household?
While the majority of us would probably say that's not ok, I really want to know if that's ok to you.
Depending on whether he has more proof than, "Hey! That super-generic background texture looks just like a really super-generic background texture I derived from existing work myself!" they might have a case.
I think we were talking more in general than you are here. If someone is 100% confident in the fact that they are being wronged, I just don't see what the problem is with taking the information public.
Why didn't he just email them and ask them either not to use his pictures, or to pay him for them?
Because sometimes even when you do both of those things, you get nowhere fast. Twitter is something that a lot of people utilize and it's a good way to go about expressing your frustration and getting the word out to a lot of people (including the offender) quickly.
Creation of showerhead disinfection industry in 3...2...1...
Umm, it's called Clorox.
Any place that I have worked, the IT department is understaffed, overworked, and operate at what the other departments feel is a sub-par level. Because of this, it's easier to train people in-house or bring in an external support contract to handle the problems. Obviously this isn't how it works everywhere but in the last three institutions I have worked at (in the last 7 years) that's what it's been like.
YMMV.
The biggest reason is the fact that there weren't expensive support contracts available for purchase. Employee turnover always exists and generally only one or maybe two people knew how to operate any particular system in the places where I have worked. Expensive support contracts allowed for someone else to do deal w/the turnover problem and kept it out of the hands of the on-site departments.
Am I the only one who always gives their birthday as 01/01/1970 and their zip code as 20500?
I use 1/1/1979 (it's closer to my real age) and 90210 instead. I get a lot of crosseyed looks and many times the cashier (or whatever human I'm dealing with) will end up entering in a local zip code instead but people are no longer arguing w/me about what I choose to provide them when pressured for information (I always politely reply, "no thanks," when asked for that type of information but will give them false shit when they ask again and whine that they'll be fired).
Why would I give 'em the right numbers? They're lucky I even allow them to have rough demographic data.
Because the majority of people have absolutely no problems handing over any and all information they're prompted for up to and including their e-mail address, phone number or even SSN! Because most people don't even blink, those of us that don't feel like it should be anyone's business (like the scanning of IDs at liquor stores or bars to check age--there is a birthdate listed on IDs for a fucking reason people--not that they can scan my rare earth magnet swiped ID anyway) are looked at like assholes when we refuse to provide information that no one really needs anyway.
Got a citation to support this? From what I see, homeschooled kids tend to be better-prepared academically than their public-schooled counterparts.
Thank you for mentionally academically and not just leaving it out. Being academically prepared is very important for college-aged kids, no doubt but what's even more important--especially as they leave college and enter the workforce, is being socially prepared. Unfortunately, many home schooled individuals are severely lacking in this department.
I work in higher ed and when I was still working at a brick and mortar school I watched in amazement at the number of homeschooled teenagers who would be dragged to the admissions counter while their parents attempted to do everything for them. While this wasn't unique to home schooled kids, it was disproportionate. I will go on to give an extreme example: a young man, home schooled, had his mother attend all the same classes with him and would even eat lunch with her. For whatever reason she was not there one day and he stared blankly up at the cafeteria menu, frozen in indecision at his 5 choices for lunch.
Helicopter parents are bad. Home schoolers coupled with them are really bad.
"Unschooling: For those kids who aspire to be the dish washers of the future"
I know plenty of dishwashers who graduated high school and several, in this economy, have college degrees. At what point do we say that no matter how you progress through school, there may come a time when you are at the bottom rung for one reason or another?
Do I think that "unschooling" is a good idea? Not particularly, especially after watching a documentary entitled Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (you can watch it there free). This particular documentary had a portion where a father was raising his family on the Mesa in a camper. Their education included all the things that were supposedly important like measuring things, shooting shit, and watching the others on the Mesa smoke lots of pot. I'm sure that "unschooling" done properly and with the right child could be successful--unfortunately I have a feeling that the majority of those that think it would be the best option, are probably better off going back to school themselves.