AFAIK, there is no law against using, ahem, free stuff floating in the air.
First, there is precedent for that, it's illegal to descramble DirecTV signals and cell phones among other things. Second, internet isn't one-way, so he was intruding by sending his packets into their system.
Can anyone explain how this is NOT a thinly-veiled a ruse to encourage use of Microsoft's proprietary file formats for potentially important, widely distributed documents?
Christ, lose the tinfoil hat. I'll explain it: they've made a tool to do a Good Thing with their software. They haven't tried to embrace/extend CC. They are *allowed* to add features to their software.
I've also evidently missed when CC documents became important and widely distributed to lend any credence to your conspiracy theory.
If this had been done by Open Office (or probably Apple) people would be blowing their loads all over the place.
I give my child the privacy he wants, he respects me and listens to what I say and then he does it too.
I warn him of the consequence, which is all I can do, and if he fucks up then its his fault. He knows he can talk to me if he does, he can talk to me about anything. I'm not going to start taking that freedom away and locking up his television/computer/bike when I dont think its right for him.
Thats called LEARNING.
God you're a moron. It's not the kid's fault; he doesn't know any better. It's your fault for not doing a better job as a parent. The problem is that if the "LEARNING" results in death, sexual assault, amputation, or felony charges, then the "LEARNING" probably isn't worth the harm done. The notion that young children can make appropriate choices in all situations is absolutely preposterous. As we saw in this story, kids get themselves into trouble that can scar them for life, especially if the parents pay as much attention to their kids as you clearly do to yours.
You cannot cotton ball children, or chain them up and make them do what you want. They will just end up resenting you
Oh, God forbid.
then before you know it (because they won't tell you) they will be hooked up with some druggy taking herion
There's a false dichotomy for you. Impose any restrictions on children and they'll end up hooked on heroin? Yeah, you're winning parent of the year.
"The fact that teens sneak out does not mean that the parents aren't lousy. They're still responsible, and they're still lousy for letting their teen sneak out in the first place. More to the point they are lousy parents for forcing their kid to feel like they have to lie and / or sneak out to do the things they want. I didn't sneak out, because I knew I could go to my parents and tell them exactly where I was going."
Perhaps. But if you can't protect your children against their own stupidity, don't expect a web site to do it for you. So no $30M or whatever they're asking for.
Sounds like something to enhance/replace my personal "cheat sheet" of stuff I do to make a bare Slackware install sing for me. And my birthday's next week...one more thing for the list
On a smaller scale, what if I had a son who was old enough for me to charge him rent. Let's say part of his rent went towards using my DSL. So my ISP is carrying both my and my son's traffic. Should they charge me extra because both of us use their service? Of course not. The bandwidth is bought and paid for regardless of where the traffic is coming from and who is generating it.
A tad off-topic, but I guarantee you that you signed a TOS that says you won't resell the bandwidth. Obviously that doesn't apply in your own household, but if you, say, attempted to set up a dialup network on your machine that was bridged to that broadband connection, they wouldn't be OK with that.
Naturally, the agreements between backbone providers differ, ah, slightly.
food and rent was consuming more than half of my wages, and I was making better money than most people I know.
That's probably usual for nearly the entire population, especially if you mean after-tax wages. And if it's not, buy a house/condo, take the deduction, and have an investment.
No kidding. As a scientist, I'm really sick of this "publish by press release" shit. Smacks of Pons and Fleischmann. And withholding the text? What the hell. If you have something, publish it. If not, don't waste our time. This crap is highly suspicious.
Those are things that throwing more resources at, isn't going to help. Those type of things require a more dedicated and devoted group of thinkers at Google. If Google was to stop peripheral activities, I think you still would not immediately see difference in the problems listed. Ever heard the saying "Too many cooks in the kitchen" ?... 'nuff said.
Oh I agree completely that it takes a high level approach. Which supports the general notion that, at a high level, Google isn't focussing sufficiently on search, since I believe they do have sufficient cleverness to solve it. But if they stopped playing with mail and spreadsheets, the people who matter at Google would, presumably, provide some better direction to solving the problem.
Fixing and improving search needs to be a corporate-wide priority. Right now it's not.
No because Google has money has the money to waste. Not all the employees can be focused on search and advertising. Belive me, they have enough resources on search and advertising to not be dropping the golden ball.
Anyways, if they do drop the ball, somebody else will be happy to replace them. No worries there either... unless you have Google stock.
I'd agree, except that their search hasn't improved in years, and they still haven't figured out how to(or just don't want to) get rid of the useless Made For Adsense (R) pages that are clogging searches these days.
For some reason, most people will read a sentence like "America has many of the world's top universities" and think it said "No country but America has a top university."
This is mostly a sign of the abject level of the teaching of basic logic at schools around the world. In America, too, because most Americans will misread things in the same way.
Well, the resason for the confusion is because, if you read "Top University" as "Top 10" or something like that, the statements are basically synonymous. According to most rankings, America does have a near monopoly at the very top, though Oxford and Cambridge will always be there, and the best Asian universities are certainly improving very rapidly. According to this, America has 8 of the top 10 and 17 of the top 20. So I'd forgive someone of the "error" of believing all the top universities are American. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not far off.
What I've always found especially curious is the mismatch of the American higher-education system with the open and blatant anti-education attitude of much of the American public.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. Pretty much the *entire* American public is pro-education. Some of them simply differ on *what should be taught*, which is a pretty significant distinction. And there are a handful of very conservative American universities - not many, but some - so even the most conservative Americans support education and send their kids off to college. And also, the Bible-thumping crowd is a very vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless. I believe the average American doesn't really care about the whole evolution thing to get very riled up.
signs of education and intelligence are carefully hidden by most American politicians, because they understand that this would be a major flaw to a huge fraction of the voters.
I'd say that's a little off too. It's more that the southern and rural voters I believe you're referring to - who may lack sophistication, but not intelligence - don't take well to condescending intellectuals *at all*. Like, say, John Kerry, who came off that way. Contrast that with Bill Clinton, who is brilliant but not condescending, and got on very well with voters of all classes.
To disclose, I grew up in the south, went to undergrad at a bottom-tier university, grad school at a top-10 American school, and now live in a major city on the east coast. So I've seen a few different perspectives on the whole "Education in America" thing.
Actually, what comes to mind first is Nintendo. Now that you mention it, yeah, Blizzard games get pushed back. But Nintendo is always first to mind when it comes to release dates. And, for what its worth, I still play Starcraft even though its 8+ years old, which is a testament to how their strategy works.
That's because the #1 reason Blizzard kicks ass is, they play-balance the shit out of their games.
It's a pity that Microsoft don't produce a bootable image with a version of MSDOS containing a basic NTFS filesystem driver and some automated tools to do all of the above. It's technically possible.
It would also admit failure, something MS doesn't know how to, or want to, do.
Exisiting DVD still looks quite strong since the quality improvements gained from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD arn't nearly as compelling as the gains when moving from VHS to DVD.
We'll see. I'm no videophile, but I can see some pretty nasty digital artifacts from compression on DVDs, especially in dark scenes. The resolution may be better than VHS, but I'm not convinced the overall picture is.
Huh ?
It seems evertyhing is provided for survival of "government" elite - who have the wealth and/or connections to get elected and appointed.
But what about hordes of people who constitute 'the people' in the declaration of independence ?
Yeah - but let's see those fuckers try to get *anywhere* on 66 from DC to the Alleghenies (in VA) or up 70/68 to the mountains in MD. Good fucking luck, fellas.
So take heart that good old fashioned DC gridlock will fuck them just as much as the rest of us. By the time they get to those bunkers they'll be glowing.
When your work is primarily teamwork, telecommuting is very disruptive. It can be done, but it's never as easy or productive as an actual office. And you never get the benefits of spontaneous brainstorming. Some of my best ideas have come from BSing with coworkers.
For research jobs, telecommuting doesn't wortk so well.
Cell phone + cable + cable modem = no need for land line. For the $30 that landline would cost you (with all the taxes, long distance, and attendant bullshit), you can probably get enough minutes added to cover your needs. This is a great option for working people who make most of their calls at night and on weekends, away from peak hours, and who only talk for ~500 minutes/month during peak. That's a lot of people, actually. I know a lot of people who have done just that.
Strictly speaking, you're right. What he probably meant was something along the lines of "scrutiny" or "anonymity" rather than privacy. Ask celebrities whether there are different levels of "public." There's strolling unnoticed along an empty sidewalk, or there could be cops, cameras, or monitored cameras, or cameras hooked up to recognition systems. Or Papparazzi.
So I think there is something to the notion of not only eroded privacy, but also anonymity or whatever you want to call it. There's something disquieting about knowing that you're being watched everywhere you go. And, possibly, recognized, with your whereabouts and movements recorded.
It's ironic that everyone is critizing MS for improving security features, yet everyone is also criticizing them for their lack of security.
I think it's that MS has implemented security *badly* here, though I say this tentatively not being a beta tester. It seems that they've decided to put dialog boxes and password dialogs in front of dangerous things instead of making them safe.
A brief analogy: Imagine MS operated a park on the edge of a cliff. MS would put signs up anywhere you can get to the cliff, saying "Do you want to jump off the cliff? If not, stop running!" This relies on people seeing the sign, understanding the sign, and generally not having a deathwish.
In some places MS would just put a big-ass fence in front of the cliff and make sure they keep people out. This is good, except that there are a bunch of caves in the park that lead to the cliff. So they need to put signs and fences everywhere. All those fences piss off people to the point where they tear them down.
Of course, some would say that the park shouldn't have been built that close to the cliff in the first place. Or at least on top of all those caves.
Moral: MS's policy of tight app/OS integration is what has made them "damned if you do, damned if you don't." To get real security, they have to put "fences" around practically everything - not just the kernel, but userland too, since there are too many tunnels between the two.
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First, there is precedent for that, it's illegal to descramble DirecTV signals and cell phones among other things. Second, internet isn't one-way, so he was intruding by sending his packets into their system.
Seriously, I want my computer to be *better* organized than my desk, not worse.
Christ, lose the tinfoil hat. I'll explain it: they've made a tool to do a Good Thing with their software. They haven't tried to embrace/extend CC. They are *allowed* to add features to their software.
I've also evidently missed when CC documents became important and widely distributed to lend any credence to your conspiracy theory.
If this had been done by Open Office (or probably Apple) people would be blowing their loads all over the place.
So in 6 years if the kid starts driving drunk, you don't take away the keys because you don't want to take away his ability to make mistakes?
Um, I don't think anyone was suggesting using one of these in a commercial setting. Particularly as a tool for use by an RF engineer.
God you're a moron. It's not the kid's fault; he doesn't know any better. It's your fault for not doing a better job as a parent. The problem is that if the "LEARNING" results in death, sexual assault, amputation, or felony charges, then the "LEARNING" probably isn't worth the harm done. The notion that young children can make appropriate choices in all situations is absolutely preposterous. As we saw in this story, kids get themselves into trouble that can scar them for life, especially if the parents pay as much attention to their kids as you clearly do to yours.
You cannot cotton ball children, or chain them up and make them do what you want. They will just end up resenting you
Oh, God forbid.
then before you know it (because they won't tell you) they will be hooked up with some druggy taking herion
There's a false dichotomy for you. Impose any restrictions on children and they'll end up hooked on heroin? Yeah, you're winning parent of the year.
Perhaps. But if you can't protect your children against their own stupidity, don't expect a web site to do it for you. So no $30M or whatever they're asking for.
Sounds like something to enhance/replace my personal "cheat sheet" of stuff I do to make a bare Slackware install sing for me. And my birthday's next week...one more thing for the list
A tad off-topic, but I guarantee you that you signed a TOS that says you won't resell the bandwidth. Obviously that doesn't apply in your own household, but if you, say, attempted to set up a dialup network on your machine that was bridged to that broadband connection, they wouldn't be OK with that.
Naturally, the agreements between backbone providers differ, ah, slightly.
That's probably usual for nearly the entire population, especially if you mean after-tax wages. And if it's not, buy a house/condo, take the deduction, and have an investment.
No kidding. As a scientist, I'm really sick of this "publish by press release" shit. Smacks of Pons and Fleischmann. And withholding the text? What the hell. If you have something, publish it. If not, don't waste our time. This crap is highly suspicious.
Oh I agree completely that it takes a high level approach. Which supports the general notion that, at a high level, Google isn't focussing sufficiently on search, since I believe they do have sufficient cleverness to solve it. But if they stopped playing with mail and spreadsheets, the people who matter at Google would, presumably, provide some better direction to solving the problem.
Fixing and improving search needs to be a corporate-wide priority. Right now it's not.
I'd agree, except that their search hasn't improved in years, and they still haven't figured out how to(or just don't want to) get rid of the useless Made For Adsense (R) pages that are clogging searches these days.
This is mostly a sign of the abject level of the teaching of basic logic at schools around the world. In America, too, because most Americans will misread things in the same way.
Well, the resason for the confusion is because, if you read "Top University" as "Top 10" or something like that, the statements are basically synonymous. According to most rankings, America does have a near monopoly at the very top, though Oxford and Cambridge will always be there, and the best Asian universities are certainly improving very rapidly. According to this, America has 8 of the top 10 and 17 of the top 20. So I'd forgive someone of the "error" of believing all the top universities are American. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's not far off.
What I've always found especially curious is the mismatch of the American higher-education system with the open and blatant anti-education attitude of much of the American public.
That's a bit of an oversimplification. Pretty much the *entire* American public is pro-education. Some of them simply differ on *what should be taught*, which is a pretty significant distinction. And there are a handful of very conservative American universities - not many, but some - so even the most conservative Americans support education and send their kids off to college. And also, the Bible-thumping crowd is a very vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless. I believe the average American doesn't really care about the whole evolution thing to get very riled up.
signs of education and intelligence are carefully hidden by most American politicians, because they understand that this would be a major flaw to a huge fraction of the voters.
I'd say that's a little off too. It's more that the southern and rural voters I believe you're referring to - who may lack sophistication, but not intelligence - don't take well to condescending intellectuals *at all*. Like, say, John Kerry, who came off that way. Contrast that with Bill Clinton, who is brilliant but not condescending, and got on very well with voters of all classes.
To disclose, I grew up in the south, went to undergrad at a bottom-tier university, grad school at a top-10 American school, and now live in a major city on the east coast. So I've seen a few different perspectives on the whole "Education in America" thing.
With such reading comprehension skills, you might prefer digg.com.
Easy buddy. He just got fiber, it's not like he killed Kenny or something.
Yeah, that kid with four testicles will sure suck at soccer. Hard to run I imagine.
That's because the #1 reason Blizzard kicks ass is, they play-balance the shit out of their games.
It would also admit failure, something MS doesn't know how to, or want to, do.
We'll see. I'm no videophile, but I can see some pretty nasty digital artifacts from compression on DVDs, especially in dark scenes. The resolution may be better than VHS, but I'm not convinced the overall picture is.
Yeah - but let's see those fuckers try to get *anywhere* on 66 from DC to the Alleghenies (in VA) or up 70/68 to the mountains in MD. Good fucking luck, fellas.
So take heart that good old fashioned DC gridlock will fuck them just as much as the rest of us. By the time they get to those bunkers they'll be glowing.
For research jobs, telecommuting doesn't wortk so well.
Cell phone + cable + cable modem = no need for land line. For the $30 that landline would cost you (with all the taxes, long distance, and attendant bullshit), you can probably get enough minutes added to cover your needs. This is a great option for working people who make most of their calls at night and on weekends, away from peak hours, and who only talk for ~500 minutes/month during peak. That's a lot of people, actually. I know a lot of people who have done just that.
So I think there is something to the notion of not only eroded privacy, but also anonymity or whatever you want to call it. There's something disquieting about knowing that you're being watched everywhere you go. And, possibly, recognized, with your whereabouts and movements recorded.
I think it's that MS has implemented security *badly* here, though I say this tentatively not being a beta tester. It seems that they've decided to put dialog boxes and password dialogs in front of dangerous things instead of making them safe.
A brief analogy: Imagine MS operated a park on the edge of a cliff. MS would put signs up anywhere you can get to the cliff, saying "Do you want to jump off the cliff? If not, stop running!" This relies on people seeing the sign, understanding the sign, and generally not having a deathwish.
In some places MS would just put a big-ass fence in front of the cliff and make sure they keep people out. This is good, except that there are a bunch of caves in the park that lead to the cliff. So they need to put signs and fences everywhere. All those fences piss off people to the point where they tear them down.
Of course, some would say that the park shouldn't have been built that close to the cliff in the first place. Or at least on top of all those caves.
Moral: MS's policy of tight app/OS integration is what has made them "damned if you do, damned if you don't." To get real security, they have to put "fences" around practically everything - not just the kernel, but userland too, since there are too many tunnels between the two.