I think a big key to this book will have to be vocabulary - specifically making it very clear that each computer term or part has its own name and meaning, and no they don't all mean the same thing. Half the trouble in diagnosing friend/family computer troubles for me is just trying to figure out what's really going on, it's gotten to the point where I just tell them to unplug the whole thing until I can see it in person because so much time and effort is wasted trying to extract relevent information over the phone/IM/email.
For example: Ethernet, Internet, IE, ethernet cable, modem, NIC are all DIFFERENT things, yet most laymen refer to them pretty much interchangably.
Related to this a great chapter would be on some basic troubleshooting skills for simply explaining/diagnosing a problem. Saying "the internet is broken!" means nothing. Does the browser open? Does it open but you get an error? Is it a hardware issue (e.g. no connection status light)? Is it a problem with the cable modem or the router? People seem to just give up describing the problem once they express what end-level task isn't working.
Also people need to take note of what's going on when a problem occurs, half the time I'm treated to blank stares when I ask what they were doing before or during an error. Did you have 26 broswer windows open? Were you running Doom minimized? Did you get a popup warning? When an error occurs people seem to just turn off their brains and forget any information that would be helpful in figuring out what caused the problem in the first place.
And finally, related to the above, is convincing people that a computer is not a magic box that does things at random. It is in fact a purely logical device and will follow orders even when it's not a good idea. Problems don't occur for no reason, there is cause and effect, although it may not always be completely obvious at first glance. People need to keep track of what they are doing mentally, and if they're installing software or making changes they need to WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING that they do. That way when they change some widget setting in firefox and suddenly a day later they notice that flash functionality is broken they can say "what has changed that might cause this?" and figure it out instead of deciding the computer simple broke for no reason and not having any idea where to start.
Why do I have a strong suspicion that the biggest stakeholder, the public, won't matter when it comes to decision?
The replies to your comment thus far are focusing on the semantics of your statement, and it is true that politicians, etc tend to warp words like 'stakeholder' to mean what they want, but I think you are absolutely correct in this.
The public in a "free" society is supposed to be the largest stakeholder, as they have both the largest numbers (population) and also the most at stake - i.e. companies may come and go but the public will have to deal with these regulations long after Company XYZ that influenced the debate has gone belly up. This seems to be largely lacking in both US and EU politics these days, lamentably. Politicians have tuned their ears to listen very closely to the players that are taking them out for nice lunches, or golfing, or are old industry buddies, but very little mind seems to be given to the masses who grant their representatives power to represent THEM first and foremost. That voice of the public may not be as loud, or constant, or enticing as that of coporate lobbyists, but it shouldn't have to be! It should be the FIRST consideration, all other influences taking a far second. Politicians shouldn't expect the public to give them input on every decision in the same way that a lobbyist who is paid fulltime to do that will. Note that I am not saying that people don't or shouldn't tell their representatives how they'd like to be represented, but I fear the constant hum of corporate influence overshadows the relatively few citizens who do make their views known. Really though, they shouldn't have to, their representative should be ASKING them, actively seeking out their opinions, then IF THEY HAVE TIME, they can listen to lobbyists whose interests are important, yes, but very secondary to the public good (I do understand laws that affect corps therefore affect the public who work for them, but there is currently an imbalance in policy making of which group's opinion counts for more). That's how it should be, alas I have little hope that this will ever occur. Perhaps under major reforms to all of our government systems.
The point is the first and foremost question on all lawmakers minds should be 'What is best for the PEOPLE?' and then working from there accomodate coporations and sepcial interests without compromising the position of those they are supposedly representing.
Without iTunes and Google and all the other content providers why the hell would anyone buy broadband? I'd love to see some big content providers hit BellSouth back by requiring them to pay fees or get cut off from their content. That would kill their ISP business in a hurry.
I agree, nothing would motivate the average Joe Internet User to switch ISPs faster than having google and yahoo disappear from their internet.
"What, you mean I can't google for absolutely everything I ever look for on the web? Screw that!" I don't think BS realizes in the least how much power the content providers hold since the BS service is not what users are online for. In other words: It's the content, stupid.
The freakish thing about this, is that if it is indeed a backdoor, it an odd way to go about it. You can't force someone to try to view a WMF
That we know of that is. This has been lurking about in every version of windows since 95, right? And it's taken until now to be brought to light. How many other similar seemingly innocent bits of code in those millions of lines of legacy windows code do similar things? The question is not what can this exploit do on its own, but what can it do in concert with others that may exist? OK, so maybe I'm giving MS or the rogue programmer, or whoever did this (length==1 check and seperate thread would imply it's not a mistake) too much credit, but if whoever did this was very clever they might have implemented a waterfall backdoor of sorts. In other words there's two or three exploits that when used in concert spell pwnage for almost any windows box. I'm willing to bet there's more here that hasn't been found yet. I'm also betting, along with others, that MS will not accpet responsiblity, nor even point the finger at a programmer or contractor/company to take the fall because that would also make them look completely unsecure. How many programmers have contributed to windows code over the years? And MS would be admitting they don't have knowledge of any backdoors those programmers may have introduced? No, more likely as Benanov (583592) suggested, MS will simply try to smear Gibson as someone with a vendetta and/or crackpot/idiot and try to downplay the whole thing as it has been.
This is exactly why closed source is dangerous. Even security through obscurity is useless when the code holders don't know what's in their code. Open source may have similar problems, but at least there's plenty of people looking, and plenty who will be motivated to correct an issue when it's found instead of trying to pretend like it never happened. Which includes the issue of whodunnit and how to stop that from happening again.
"Laws like this will, in the long run, make the freedom of speech stronger, not weaker."
However they will do nothing for the kamikazee use of the comma!
As the OP has already said, his use of commas in the above is perfectly grammatically correct. Please mod parent down. Sorry guy, don't bash grammar if you don't know the rules.
So you just replied to your own post really and completely ignored what I posted. The most important point being SOFTWARE CAN BE DEVELOPED. Your main argument against this being an effective progam seems to be that there is no software for these devices for teachers to use in a classroom environment. Point ceded that the internet does not provide this sort of classroom-oriented information, however it is not void of information or usefulness as you implied in the original grandparent post.
Getting back to your hangup on software though you seem to think that because there is no software now, there never will be and the entire effort is doomed to failure. I'm sure if such classroom friendly educational software was created first and touted with the intent to be used in poor countires to aid in teaching you would have cried foul on the lack of hardware and claimed the project is doomed to failure. But they can and have made such hardware. And the cheap/robust hardware is the hardest part. The hard part being to produce it as cheaply as they have.
Software CAN and WILL be written. I'm repeating myself so that you get my point or better explain your incongruous hangup that nothing is developed and somehow never will be. You say kids have their noses stuck in books most of the time because the publishers provided structured material and correspoonding test materials - what exactly then is precluding those same publishers, or anyone else for that matter, from providing the same materials in electronic format for these laptops? Perhaps current publishers will be unwilling to make such a leap but if an opportunity exists the market will most likely fill it. If there are countries willing to use these devices and there is demand for educational software for them, someone will rise up and fill that niche. Tens, to hundreds, of thousands of such laptops looking for software is a reasonably big target market to a would-be developer.
As regards input for these devices a keyboard is absolutely necessary for input, not, as you suggest, 4 or 5 buttons plus a scroll wheel or two. Why? Because learning by way of multiple choice is terribly inefficient and unrealistic. Besides the fact that multiple choice completely removes the ability for a student to generate an answer without a list of possible answers giving him/her hints, it also prevents the use of this device in most language or social studies courses where reasoned answers to essay questions are a large part of the standard material. Indeed, at gradeschool level you couldn't even use it for the ubiquitous weekly spelling tests! What is the point in distributing a device to revolutionize a poor country's school programs only to have it be inadequate for use in half the subjects? Multiple choices tests in every subject do not an education make.
There are a lot of economic, political, and social issues to be worked out with this program, noble though it may be. And it certainly may fail for any of those reasons, but to condemn it because there isn't a software base YET, or because a keyboard is a higher point of failure (I have dropped, shipped, packed, smacked, and spilled on my crappy 1998 dell keyboard more times than I can recall but it still works just fine.) is rediculous. This program IS working towards creating inexpensive electronic classrooms, i.e. the devices that will be needed to support such a classroom. So I honestly don't understand what your true points of contention are since the ones you discuss aren't really a problem.
A simnple e-book type device with a few input buttons would work. [...] It needs to run off of regular disposeable (or possibly rechargeable) batteries, not $150 li-ion jobs. A laptop is NOT what will work for this.
Your comments about software and e-books are great, however the above quote shows you haven't actually read anything about these or watched the video. Don't rant about something that you don't know anything about. This laptop more or less IS just an ebook but with a full keyboard, or did you really think kids could do work with only a few buttons for input? It's supposed to be an extensible yet simple learning device which means output AND input for any subject. Touch screens are expensive and fragile so we're left with full keyboard input to capture all input needs.
Second, it does run off rechargable batteries which are recharged by a handcrank. Thus solving the need for electric outlets for all these, costs of electricity, or even electricity being present at all.
Finally, yeah, there's a lot of porn on the internet, but why does everyone setting up this argument make it sound like that's the only thing you can possibly find? Hell, half of all US universities have class notes online in unsecured sites. (MIT itself offers many complete course notes free.) Wikipedia, as someone else mentioned, while not 100% accurate certainly boasts enough correct info to be a good starting point for almost any subject. And what about the thousands of other sites that offer information for DIY projects? And just because there isn't cheap/free/OS media or lessons/ebooks available now doesn't mean they won't be developed hand-in-hand with this project. You have to start somewhere, if the hardware is put in place the software will follow. It seems to me that a noble pursuit for any teacher would be to donate some time developing open source course work for these machines, I'm sure that many will. In fact perhaps some slashdotters with all their open source organization skills should set up a site to start developing and hosting such programs so that when the time is right there IS learning software to distribute with these? Although given the huge strides this program has made already just developing this laptop and worldwide goal I'm sure the people involved have given plenty of thought to the idea of software (although right now the only articles I've read on it don't make much mention as the hardware is the big news item at the moment).
But I don't see how
defending patent = losing customers
Just like we saw when SCO started challenging Linux, many potential or current customers changed their plans to a different OS under possible threat of the court ruling in favor of SCO. Many geeks knew better and it seemed obvious from the start that SCO didn't have a leg to stand on, but that doesn't mean that the outcome was assured. New businesses, especially venture-funded startups, are delicate, and are basically long term bets made by investors. When patent litigation comes into the picture, it is a threat to that long-term bet that has to be balanced against all other parts of the system. Some customers and investors will have faith in their choice and stick with it, the more risk-averse will move their dollars elsewhere. Unless a legal challenge is so (excuse the pun) patently baseless, you're always going to lose some business when this new legal obstacle is introduced. And as the author points out, it is costly, and many times directly or indirectly such costs are passed on to the customers and/or investors. So while defending the patent is a good thing and should garner faith in the company for sticking to its guns, there is always the chance they will lose, which will drive off the more timid customers/investors.
It doesn't matter if ID is real or, if it is, who did the design. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is the question of "how could it be done".
Except that ID doesn't attempt to answer "how". That might actually make it a theory, as in theories are used to make predictions and to explain. ID says life is so complex that something (someone, god, $diety, etc) must have done it. End of discussion. That doesn't belong in the classroom. Do dissenting views belong? Absolutley. Does the concept of questioning the establishment where it is weak in order to understand something better or replace current theory with a better one? Absolutely. Does attempting to do so by using a concept which "explains" something by saying essentially something else caused it but we don't know how or why? No, that adds nothing to education, knowledge, or the debate for that concept. We have to teach kids to reason and think and back up their positions with good arguments. Not to just intellectually pass the buck by attributing the cause to something unknown and leaving it at that.
The most important part of a functioning democracy is the free press. I have yet to hear a single solitary word about establishment of 'free press' in Iraq.
Considering how the US has treated other free press agencies like Al-Jazeer by "accidentally" bombing two of their buildings (the precise coordinates of which were specifically given to the military to prevent that sort of accident) as well as harrasing and possibly shooting some of their reporters, somehow I'm not surprised that no one over there has been too keen to start publishing the US's actions over there. Also, Iraq's government and our government's interest in it has nothing to do with democracy, do you really think if the Iraqis voted tomorrow for the US to leave that we would? Puppet governments aren't gone, just getting updates to the facades. Our government is not in the habit of respecting sovereignty or the press.
The senate recently rejected extensions to the patriot act.
Yes, but how many more times will it come up again from now until it's passed? How many times will it be tacked onto medicare spending bills so it has to go through lest people can claim their reps voted against helping people on medicare? It's a joke. It will be passed, just a matter of time and political wrangling. Don't get me wrong, I hate it and what it represents like politicians hate accoutability, but I'm resigned to the fact that there are just too many fools and underhanded reps out there to keep such a bill at bay forever. We need to reform how bills can be reintroduced. A bad bill should be labeled as such after a certain point and permanently rejected, without getting unlimited chances to pass or to be snuck in through the backdoor of an spending bill amendment.
Good show. I just posted almost the exact same thing. Death or at least life in prison should be the minimum sentence for mucking with constitutional rights. As it stands now there's no fear from the politicians, at worst they serve a year or two of a reduced sentence in some cush-job prison (compared to true federal prisons). Most first-offense everyday crimes carry stricter minimum sentencing guidelines than what polititcians get for abusing an entire nation's rights.
You know, it's crap like this that has been pissing me off more and more lately as it is uncovered. For every scandal the Bush administration has perpetrated they sen dout Condi Rice to parrot "we're wokring inside of the law" when in fact it's either a boldfaced lie (i.e. the real truth hasn't come out completely) or is a weak technicality. Greatest example of this is the rendition and abuse of "terrorist suspects" aroudn the world by the US. The party line is "We don't torture" but torture has been so finely legally defined by them that while they may technically be not torturing, they sure as hell wouldn't want anyone they care about to ever experience what US agents have been dolling out. And the fact that Rice can even utter the phrase "the President respects the constitution" without being struck by lightning from some god or other is amazing. At every chance this administration has pushed the limits of constitutional authority, claiming for itself any power not nailed to the floor, and in cases of legal ambiguity it claims powers that may well be technically legal (as in no specific law against) but that completely fly in the face of the spirit of the constitution. And we're not even talking about pedantic semantics here, anyone with a heartbeat in most cases can see these policies for what they are at face value: power grabs designed to further centralize government and exclude them from reprecussions and responsibility.
I propose an amendment/law/Pact with the nation that serves the death penalty to any administrator at any level who purposely circumvents or otherwise overrides every constitutional liberty, in all cases. Extreme? Certainly, but the current legal deterrant is more or less nonexistant. Consider that even after an abuse of some sort is uncovered we go through a period of denial, then minor concession ("ok, so we did it but, we were just trying to stop the bad guys, honest!"), then we find that previous statements were outright lies (lying to the public from an elected official should be treated and prosecuted as purjury in my mind). This could all take years, then come congressional investigations that move at the speed of a glacier, another few years gone, then maybe a few people are sentenced to what amounts to handslap prison terms at best. First-time drug offenders have higher minimum sentencing guidelines and their actions affect at most maybe a few dozen people directly (perhaps 100s) but constitutional infringements affect 250 million people every time! I'm absolutely sick at the total lack of public accountability in today's US government (was it really ever any good?) and more than that the utter disdain that most high-level politicians seem to have for the people who elected them. We need more than just weak checks and balances in the system, we need mandatory severe sentences for anyone who dares to trample upon the constitution that defines our personal freedoms and the soul of our country.
Thus, the link between iPod sales and buying music online is not directly proportional.
Indeed, and besides people buying multiple ipods I think the reason they're seeing a huge increase in ipod sales but not in music sales currently is because most of the ipods selling right now are probably Christmas/Chanukah gifts. Hence hardware sales now, music sales LATER.
Expecting music sales to increase directly with ipod sales is like expecting people to buy a year's worth of gas at the same time they buy a new car.
And since when has a decrease of less than one half of one percent as compared to a previous quarter meant a product/business model was failing, or that piracy is somehow to blame? I mean we all know no one else has anything more important to buy than music - certainly not higher gas prices, higher home heating prices, a huge portion of Louisiana residents just looking for jobs/homes, and one of the most intense years for charity in recent history (Katrina & FL at home, tsunami and massive earthquake abroad).
Good god music industry, get your heads out of your asses and just fix the numbers in the direction you want like you always do. Of course, online music sales being down won't stop them from continuing to insist iTunes songs should cost MORE.
Wow. That was actually what I was hoping to get as a response, what I didn't count on was how perfectly America now fits that mold. I suspected such, but reality is worse apparently. Thanks for the great response. I can't rep this since I've posted, but I'll give you a point elsewhere.;)
I should have slapped the old [XML:RANT] tag on my comment first, sorry. I did wander around on that one but it was a kneejerk reaction to stuff that's been bothering me for a long while. Am I guilty of switching back and forth between monopoly abuse and facist indicators? Sure, but the two are certainly related. The argument could even be made that one is a symptom of the other. I sort of left it as an exercise to the reader to connect the dots, along with all the other government increases and abuses that have been occuring in the last few decades and under the Bush administration in particular. You cannot say that the government isn't becoming larger and more centralized, terrorism has been the latest excuse but it has been wielded (along with propaganda) so expertly as to cause the biggest increase in central government and government spending since the New Deal. This fits in line perfectly with the textbook definition of facism: central control of all aspects of citizens lives by the state. But this also requires an interconnected and controlling relationship with the means of production and corporations in the state. More and more lately I am seeing huge business interests turn to Daddy Gub'ment for handouts and laws designed to protect them from the consumer and the travails of an open market (or at least as open as it currently is, regulation-choked though it may be already). And more and more the state seems to be granting concessions and laws in favor of corporate interests ahead of consumers and the cictizens in general (e.g. DMCA). The corporations want the government to legally limit their competition and lock in profits, the government in return gains a greater degree of control of those corporations, either through regulation, or backroom favors. That is a huge part of the facist state - centralized control. It may not be right out in the open, but it's what we seem to be sliding towards day by day. Now a lot of other people responding to my post have said this more eloquently than I, and I freely admit to just sort of blathering before, but it seems to have opened a discussion at least. Do we have a long way to go before we're in a Stalin-esque facist state? Sure. But who says facism has to look or overtly function exactly like that? There's a lot of back-room politicking going on with corporations (IMHO) right now that shows the seedy underbelly of the state and its desire to control, be it through law, force, or economics.
Does this mean AT&T now can dictate laws? Can they arrest me for saying mean things about them? Not unless you take what they're trying to do right now and seriously extending it beyond the point of reasonable possibility. Actually yes, big corporations can and do dictate laws more or less right now. I don't think it's that much of stretch to go from where we are to that sort of scenario. Beyond reasonable posibilty? Hardly. Hell I considered most of the offensive sections of the PATRIOT ACT beyond reason, as do many others, yet that was passed out of fear with barely a whimper from our reps. There is currently a scandal in the works over the US government's use of "extraordinary renditions" to disappear "terrorist suspects". The President has claimed for himself any war power not nailed down, the administration has literally redefined the word 'torture' so as to be legally (as in technically) correct when they say "we don't torture" while condoning and using various forms of actual torture on prisoners. The president has created a new class of prisoners - known as 'enemy combatants' - that conveniently fall outside current legal definitions of prisoners of war or criminals, allowing them to be held indefinitely and without trial until the cessation of conflict - a conflict guaranteed to last forever as the 'war on terror' is literally another government war against a concept. US citizens are subject to this same loophole classification and can have haebeus corpus suspended. How is this all related to your quote above? I'll tell you how, these are all acts that I w
I'm not trying to troll here, but at what point can we just come out and say America is Facist? I mean let's face it, big corporations already control much of our lives beyond just salaries, there's corporate health care and pensions that many people count on to survive, corporate lobbyists influence massive policy changes and regulations. In many cases corps have much more influence (through political alliances and/or $$$) than any one citizen certainly, and even most citizen groups! And with the DMCA, FCC regulations (v-chip, broadcast flag, speech restrictions), etc. there's been a growing trend of business protecting profit margins by lobbying new laws agains the consumer rather than changing their business model and evolving. Hell, the EFF is suing a state government for allowing computer voting companies to sell their product without requiring then to even adhere to the state law to put their code in escrow. These are the tools that make democracy function we're talking about!
What is the last straw here? What is the textbook definition of facism and its 6 bullet points we need to check off before we can finally just call ourselves the United Facist Empire of Corporate America??? So now telcos and the like are seeing a previous revenue source dry up because of the nature of the internet itself, rather than finding new ways to utilize its very power they would (artifically) break the system through legislation to cover their asses. This is pathetic. Innovate or die corporate america, you've seen this coming for years, try to act like the founders of your companies and create a useful product and service use technology in new ways rather than crushing progress under your heel in the name of profit margins. (I know, many of the big corps founders used government sactioned monopolies and force to build and protect their interests, but some founders actually had an eye for the future and innovated.)
I forget the quote itself, it's probably been posted by now, but to paraphrase it (poorly) here: No investor or company should expect the law to turn back the hands of time to protect previous sources of profit.
Come on. Just because you're not Christian doesn't mean you don't have morals.
I agree with you. However, the way most fundamentalist (that distinction is important) Christians act it appears they think otherwise. The whole point of them trying to legislate morality is their 'my way or the highway' approach to morality. One true god and all that. That's the problem with most religions, is that they teach mutual exclusivity with other doctrines, and when your religion dictates your mortality, transitively anyone not of your religion is immoral (or perhaps amoral).
um hello, asshat mod, I was discussing possible next-gen controllers, specifically nintendo ones - NES Power Glove. I would say that's ON-topic, now is a good time for them to re-introduce such an interface. And since when was a post at '2' something that needed to be modded down? try modding down crap that's made it to 3 or, I dunno, using your points for something like modding up an insightful post. Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
Half the trouble in diagnosing friend/family computer troubles for me is just trying to figure out what's really going on, it's gotten to the point where I just tell them to unplug the whole thing until I can see it in person because so much time and effort is wasted trying to extract relevent information over the phone/IM/email.
For example: Ethernet, Internet, IE, ethernet cable, modem, NIC are all DIFFERENT things, yet most laymen refer to them pretty much interchangably.
Related to this a great chapter would be on some basic troubleshooting skills for simply explaining/diagnosing a problem. Saying "the internet is broken!" means nothing. Does the browser open? Does it open but you get an error? Is it a hardware issue (e.g. no connection status light)? Is it a problem with the cable modem or the router? People seem to just give up describing the problem once they express what end-level task isn't working.
Also people need to take note of what's going on when a problem occurs, half the time I'm treated to blank stares when I ask what they were doing before or during an error. Did you have 26 broswer windows open? Were you running Doom minimized? Did you get a popup warning? When an error occurs people seem to just turn off their brains and forget any information that would be helpful in figuring out what caused the problem in the first place.
And finally, related to the above, is convincing people that a computer is not a magic box that does things at random. It is in fact a purely logical device and will follow orders even when it's not a good idea. Problems don't occur for no reason, there is cause and effect, although it may not always be completely obvious at first glance. People need to keep track of what they are doing mentally, and if they're installing software or making changes they need to WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING that they do. That way when they change some widget setting in firefox and suddenly a day later they notice that flash functionality is broken they can say "what has changed that might cause this?" and figure it out instead of deciding the computer simple broke for no reason and not having any idea where to start.
The replies to your comment thus far are focusing on the semantics of your statement, and it is true that politicians, etc tend to warp words like 'stakeholder' to mean what they want, but I think you are absolutely correct in this.
The public in a "free" society is supposed to be the largest stakeholder, as they have both the largest numbers (population) and also the most at stake - i.e. companies may come and go but the public will have to deal with these regulations long after Company XYZ that influenced the debate has gone belly up. This seems to be largely lacking in both US and EU politics these days, lamentably. Politicians have tuned their ears to listen very closely to the players that are taking them out for nice lunches, or golfing, or are old industry buddies, but very little mind seems to be given to the masses who grant their representatives power to represent THEM first and foremost. That voice of the public may not be as loud, or constant, or enticing as that of coporate lobbyists, but it shouldn't have to be! It should be the FIRST consideration, all other influences taking a far second. Politicians shouldn't expect the public to give them input on every decision in the same way that a lobbyist who is paid fulltime to do that will. Note that I am not saying that people don't or shouldn't tell their representatives how they'd like to be represented, but I fear the constant hum of corporate influence overshadows the relatively few citizens who do make their views known. Really though, they shouldn't have to, their representative should be ASKING them, actively seeking out their opinions, then IF THEY HAVE TIME, they can listen to lobbyists whose interests are important, yes, but very secondary to the public good (I do understand laws that affect corps therefore affect the public who work for them, but there is currently an imbalance in policy making of which group's opinion counts for more). That's how it should be, alas I have little hope that this will ever occur. Perhaps under major reforms to all of our government systems.
The point is the first and foremost question on all lawmakers minds should be 'What is best for the PEOPLE?' and then working from there accomodate coporations and sepcial interests without compromising the position of those they are supposedly representing.
I agree, nothing would motivate the average Joe Internet User to switch ISPs faster than having google and yahoo disappear from their internet.
"What, you mean I can't google for absolutely everything I ever look for on the web? Screw that!" I don't think BS realizes in the least how much power the content providers hold since the BS service is not what users are online for. In other words: It's the content, stupid.
That we know of that is. This has been lurking about in every version of windows since 95, right? And it's taken until now to be brought to light. How many other similar seemingly innocent bits of code in those millions of lines of legacy windows code do similar things? The question is not what can this exploit do on its own, but what can it do in concert with others that may exist? OK, so maybe I'm giving MS or the rogue programmer, or whoever did this (length==1 check and seperate thread would imply it's not a mistake) too much credit, but if whoever did this was very clever they might have implemented a waterfall backdoor of sorts. In other words there's two or three exploits that when used in concert spell pwnage for almost any windows box. I'm willing to bet there's more here that hasn't been found yet. I'm also betting, along with others, that MS will not accpet responsiblity, nor even point the finger at a programmer or contractor/company to take the fall because that would also make them look completely unsecure. How many programmers have contributed to windows code over the years? And MS would be admitting they don't have knowledge of any backdoors those programmers may have introduced? No, more likely as Benanov (583592) suggested, MS will simply try to smear Gibson as someone with a vendetta and/or crackpot/idiot and try to downplay the whole thing as it has been.
This is exactly why closed source is dangerous. Even security through obscurity is useless when the code holders don't know what's in their code. Open source may have similar problems, but at least there's plenty of people looking, and plenty who will be motivated to correct an issue when it's found instead of trying to pretend like it never happened. Which includes the issue of whodunnit and how to stop that from happening again.
However they will do nothing for the kamikazee use of the comma!
As the OP has already said, his use of commas in the above is perfectly grammatically correct. Please mod parent down. Sorry guy, don't bash grammar if you don't know the rules.
A gamer with - dare I say it - morals and remorse? (Over an NPC even!) This is going to ruin Jack's entire day.
;)
Hah! With that system he doesn't even see the responses to his post on slashdot! ;)
Hehehe. "Judge-karma." Now is that redeemable for hookers, senate positions, or free golf?
Getting back to your hangup on software though you seem to think that because there is no software now, there never will be and the entire effort is doomed to failure. I'm sure if such classroom friendly educational software was created first and touted with the intent to be used in poor countires to aid in teaching you would have cried foul on the lack of hardware and claimed the project is doomed to failure. But they can and have made such hardware. And the cheap/robust hardware is the hardest part. The hard part being to produce it as cheaply as they have.
Software CAN and WILL be written. I'm repeating myself so that you get my point or better explain your incongruous hangup that nothing is developed and somehow never will be. You say kids have their noses stuck in books most of the time because the publishers provided structured material and correspoonding test materials - what exactly then is precluding those same publishers, or anyone else for that matter, from providing the same materials in electronic format for these laptops? Perhaps current publishers will be unwilling to make such a leap but if an opportunity exists the market will most likely fill it. If there are countries willing to use these devices and there is demand for educational software for them, someone will rise up and fill that niche. Tens, to hundreds, of thousands of such laptops looking for software is a reasonably big target market to a would-be developer.
As regards input for these devices a keyboard is absolutely necessary for input, not, as you suggest, 4 or 5 buttons plus a scroll wheel or two. Why? Because learning by way of multiple choice is terribly inefficient and unrealistic. Besides the fact that multiple choice completely removes the ability for a student to generate an answer without a list of possible answers giving him/her hints, it also prevents the use of this device in most language or social studies courses where reasoned answers to essay questions are a large part of the standard material. Indeed, at gradeschool level you couldn't even use it for the ubiquitous weekly spelling tests! What is the point in distributing a device to revolutionize a poor country's school programs only to have it be inadequate for use in half the subjects? Multiple choices tests in every subject do not an education make.
There are a lot of economic, political, and social issues to be worked out with this program, noble though it may be. And it certainly may fail for any of those reasons, but to condemn it because there isn't a software base YET, or because a keyboard is a higher point of failure (I have dropped, shipped, packed, smacked, and spilled on my crappy 1998 dell keyboard more times than I can recall but it still works just fine.) is rediculous. This program IS working towards creating inexpensive electronic classrooms, i.e. the devices that will be needed to support such a classroom. So I honestly don't understand what your true points of contention are since the ones you discuss aren't really a problem.
Your comments about software and e-books are great, however the above quote shows you haven't actually read anything about these or watched the video. Don't rant about something that you don't know anything about. This laptop more or less IS just an ebook but with a full keyboard, or did you really think kids could do work with only a few buttons for input? It's supposed to be an extensible yet simple learning device which means output AND input for any subject. Touch screens are expensive and fragile so we're left with full keyboard input to capture all input needs.
Second, it does run off rechargable batteries which are recharged by a handcrank. Thus solving the need for electric outlets for all these, costs of electricity, or even electricity being present at all.
Finally, yeah, there's a lot of porn on the internet, but why does everyone setting up this argument make it sound like that's the only thing you can possibly find? Hell, half of all US universities have class notes online in unsecured sites. (MIT itself offers many complete course notes free.) Wikipedia, as someone else mentioned, while not 100% accurate certainly boasts enough correct info to be a good starting point for almost any subject. And what about the thousands of other sites that offer information for DIY projects? And just because there isn't cheap/free/OS media or lessons/ebooks available now doesn't mean they won't be developed hand-in-hand with this project. You have to start somewhere, if the hardware is put in place the software will follow. It seems to me that a noble pursuit for any teacher would be to donate some time developing open source course work for these machines, I'm sure that many will. In fact perhaps some slashdotters with all their open source organization skills should set up a site to start developing and hosting such programs so that when the time is right there IS learning software to distribute with these? Although given the huge strides this program has made already just developing this laptop and worldwide goal I'm sure the people involved have given plenty of thought to the idea of software (although right now the only articles I've read on it don't make much mention as the hardware is the big news item at the moment).
Just like we saw when SCO started challenging Linux, many potential or current customers changed their plans to a different OS under possible threat of the court ruling in favor of SCO. Many geeks knew better and it seemed obvious from the start that SCO didn't have a leg to stand on, but that doesn't mean that the outcome was assured. New businesses, especially venture-funded startups, are delicate, and are basically long term bets made by investors. When patent litigation comes into the picture, it is a threat to that long-term bet that has to be balanced against all other parts of the system. Some customers and investors will have faith in their choice and stick with it, the more risk-averse will move their dollars elsewhere. Unless a legal challenge is so (excuse the pun) patently baseless, you're always going to lose some business when this new legal obstacle is introduced. And as the author points out, it is costly, and many times directly or indirectly such costs are passed on to the customers and/or investors. So while defending the patent is a good thing and should garner faith in the company for sticking to its guns, there is always the chance they will lose, which will drive off the more timid customers/investors.
Except that ID doesn't attempt to answer "how". That might actually make it a theory, as in theories are used to make predictions and to explain. ID says life is so complex that something (someone, god, $diety, etc) must have done it. End of discussion. That doesn't belong in the classroom. Do dissenting views belong? Absolutley. Does the concept of questioning the establishment where it is weak in order to understand something better or replace current theory with a better one? Absolutely. Does attempting to do so by using a concept which "explains" something by saying essentially something else caused it but we don't know how or why? No, that adds nothing to education, knowledge, or the debate for that concept. We have to teach kids to reason and think and back up their positions with good arguments. Not to just intellectually pass the buck by attributing the cause to something unknown and leaving it at that.
Considering how the US has treated other free press agencies like Al-Jazeer by "accidentally" bombing two of their buildings (the precise coordinates of which were specifically given to the military to prevent that sort of accident) as well as harrasing and possibly shooting some of their reporters, somehow I'm not surprised that no one over there has been too keen to start publishing the US's actions over there. Also, Iraq's government and our government's interest in it has nothing to do with democracy, do you really think if the Iraqis voted tomorrow for the US to leave that we would? Puppet governments aren't gone, just getting updates to the facades. Our government is not in the habit of respecting sovereignty or the press.
Yes, but how many more times will it come up again from now until it's passed? How many times will it be tacked onto medicare spending bills so it has to go through lest people can claim their reps voted against helping people on medicare? It's a joke. It will be passed, just a matter of time and political wrangling. Don't get me wrong, I hate it and what it represents like politicians hate accoutability, but I'm resigned to the fact that there are just too many fools and underhanded reps out there to keep such a bill at bay forever. We need to reform how bills can be reintroduced. A bad bill should be labeled as such after a certain point and permanently rejected, without getting unlimited chances to pass or to be snuck in through the backdoor of an spending bill amendment.
Good show. I just posted almost the exact same thing. Death or at least life in prison should be the minimum sentence for mucking with constitutional rights. As it stands now there's no fear from the politicians, at worst they serve a year or two of a reduced sentence in some cush-job prison (compared to true federal prisons). Most first-offense everyday crimes carry stricter minimum sentencing guidelines than what polititcians get for abusing an entire nation's rights.
I propose an amendment/law/Pact with the nation that serves the death penalty to any administrator at any level who purposely circumvents or otherwise overrides every constitutional liberty, in all cases. Extreme? Certainly, but the current legal deterrant is more or less nonexistant. Consider that even after an abuse of some sort is uncovered we go through a period of denial, then minor concession ("ok, so we did it but, we were just trying to stop the bad guys, honest!"), then we find that previous statements were outright lies (lying to the public from an elected official should be treated and prosecuted as purjury in my mind). This could all take years, then come congressional investigations that move at the speed of a glacier, another few years gone, then maybe a few people are sentenced to what amounts to handslap prison terms at best. First-time drug offenders have higher minimum sentencing guidelines and their actions affect at most maybe a few dozen people directly (perhaps 100s) but constitutional infringements affect 250 million people every time! I'm absolutely sick at the total lack of public accountability in today's US government (was it really ever any good?) and more than that the utter disdain that most high-level politicians seem to have for the people who elected them. We need more than just weak checks and balances in the system, we need mandatory severe sentences for anyone who dares to trample upon the constitution that defines our personal freedoms and the soul of our country.
"and because, don't you see,
since we're both of us me,
when we're having sex I'm alone!"
Indeed, and besides people buying multiple ipods I think the reason they're seeing a huge increase in ipod sales but not in music sales currently is because most of the ipods selling right now are probably Christmas/Chanukah gifts. Hence hardware sales now, music sales LATER.
Expecting music sales to increase directly with ipod sales is like expecting people to buy a year's worth of gas at the same time they buy a new car.
And since when has a decrease of less than one half of one percent as compared to a previous quarter meant a product/business model was failing, or that piracy is somehow to blame? I mean we all know no one else has anything more important to buy than music - certainly not higher gas prices, higher home heating prices, a huge portion of Louisiana residents just looking for jobs/homes, and one of the most intense years for charity in recent history (Katrina & FL at home, tsunami and massive earthquake abroad).
Good god music industry, get your heads out of your asses and just fix the numbers in the direction you want like you always do. Of course, online music sales being down won't stop them from continuing to insist iTunes songs should cost MORE.
Wow. That was actually what I was hoping to get as a response, what I didn't count on was how perfectly America now fits that mold. I suspected such, but reality is worse apparently. Thanks for the great response. I can't rep this since I've posted, but I'll give you a point elsewhere. ;)
Does this mean AT&T now can dictate laws? Can they arrest me for saying mean things about them? Not unless you take what they're trying to do right now and seriously extending it beyond the point of reasonable possibility.
Actually yes, big corporations can and do dictate laws more or less right now. I don't think it's that much of stretch to go from where we are to that sort of scenario. Beyond reasonable posibilty? Hardly. Hell I considered most of the offensive sections of the PATRIOT ACT beyond reason, as do many others, yet that was passed out of fear with barely a whimper from our reps. There is currently a scandal in the works over the US government's use of "extraordinary renditions" to disappear "terrorist suspects". The President has claimed for himself any war power not nailed down, the administration has literally redefined the word 'torture' so as to be legally (as in technically) correct when they say "we don't torture" while condoning and using various forms of actual torture on prisoners. The president has created a new class of prisoners - known as 'enemy combatants' - that conveniently fall outside current legal definitions of prisoners of war or criminals, allowing them to be held indefinitely and without trial until the cessation of conflict - a conflict guaranteed to last forever as the 'war on terror' is literally another government war against a concept. US citizens are subject to this same loophole classification and can have haebeus corpus suspended. How is this all related to your quote above? I'll tell you how, these are all acts that I w
What is the last straw here? What is the textbook definition of facism and its 6 bullet points we need to check off before we can finally just call ourselves the United Facist Empire of Corporate America??? So now telcos and the like are seeing a previous revenue source dry up because of the nature of the internet itself, rather than finding new ways to utilize its very power they would (artifically) break the system through legislation to cover their asses. This is pathetic. Innovate or die corporate america, you've seen this coming for years, try to act like the founders of your companies and create a useful product and service use technology in new ways rather than crushing progress under your heel in the name of profit margins. (I know, many of the big corps founders used government sactioned monopolies and force to build and protect their interests, but some founders actually had an eye for the future and innovated.)
I forget the quote itself, it's probably been posted by now, but to paraphrase it (poorly) here: No investor or company should expect the law to turn back the hands of time to protect previous sources of profit.
'Inveigled' - And here I thought it was a typo but instead you win Vocabulary Word of the Week! Nice one.
Funny 'uh-oh', not funny 'haha'. ;)
I agree with you. However, the way most fundamentalist (that distinction is important) Christians act it appears they think otherwise. The whole point of them trying to legislate morality is their 'my way or the highway' approach to morality. One true god and all that. That's the problem with most religions, is that they teach mutual exclusivity with other doctrines, and when your religion dictates your mortality, transitively anyone not of your religion is immoral (or perhaps amoral).
um hello, asshat mod, I was discussing possible next-gen controllers, specifically nintendo ones - NES Power Glove. I would say that's ON-topic, now is a good time for them to re-introduce such an interface. And since when was a post at '2' something that needed to be modded down? try modding down crap that's made it to 3 or, I dunno, using your points for something like modding up an insightful post. Sheesh.