You are guilty of provincialism, perhaps the most common logical fallacy. The group "regular people", if defined as those who buy their computers at retail stores and who require the "break/fix monkey" at those stores to "repair" their computers are but a subset of computer users. Drawing conclusions about all computer users and their OS choices, based on your extremely limited sample, is a mistake, to say the least.
You haven't been paying attention, have you?
Obama isn't Hitler. He's Karl Marx. And oh, by the way, there have been lots of (as in a constant, spittle-spraying stream of it) such comparisons coming out of the mouths of the usual gang of right-wing nut-jobs like Hannity, Beck, and O'Riley and that fat drug addict guy, whatsizname.
As for Bush and Hitler, for anyone who takes the time to study the history of the Third Reich before the second world war, the similarities are absolutely undeniable. No, not between Bush and Hitler. Hitler was a leader. But the government policies, toward its citizens and toward big business, are eerily similar to what we saw during the last administration.
The problem is that google is pulling them away from their own web sites where they hope to generate revenue.
I disagree. As I've observed before, I am depressingly typical in my use of the Internet for "news" stories. If anything, I tend to spend more time on wire service and print media sites than I do on those that have a talking head in a tiny window. But I digress. What don't spend any time at all doing, is cruising those wire service and print media news sites looking for stories that interest me. I let Google do that. If the "stupid suits" at The Boston Globe et all manage to stop that, I will set up my own bot to find the stuff that interests me. There's a reason I don't watch an entire newscast or subscribe to the paper anymore. Most of it is wasted on me. Despite that fact that virtually every newspaper in the U.S. devotes and entire section to "sports", I don't give a shit about stick and ball games or those that play them (comes from being a Cubs fan, I guess). Why would I want to wade through The Houston Chronicle's home page to find the stories I AM interested in?
Sorry, but that dog won't hunt.
Trying to compete with Google News, in their back yard, is a fool's errand. "Our own search..." may be a useful tool, but it is not Google News. Not by a very long and arguably insurmountable stretch.
The fact that The Boston Globe can't keep eyeballs on their site is completely and utterly the responsibility of The Boston Globe, not that of Google News. Get that part right. The "stupid suit" clearly has not, because he thinks that he can litigate or regulate his way into a competitive position that his tech guys tell him (quite accurately) that he simply can not achieve.
When it comes to what news "consumers" want, Google CEO "gets it". Old media CEO's don't. Film at eleven.
OK, so this ain't exactly news, but jeezuz, how hard is it to grasp the fact that a large number of the eyeballs viewing your "news" arrive at your web site via a link on Google news?
Hey, Eric. Cut one or two of them off for a week. Given them a heads up first, and suggest that they pay attention to their traffic numbers. Then let's all ask their board of directors what they think of how things are going when no one "steals" their content.
4. Your average FBI agent doesn't know an Ethernet Switch from a SAN Cluster, so they kind-of had to take everything.
False, at least in my limited but direct experience.
I was doing some work on gear we had colo'd in a commercial data center a few years ago. The place was usually deserted but for a tech or two, but this day there was a crowd of serious looking gentlemen gathered outside a couple of cages, with a couple of obvious tech guys actually doing whatever hands on work was required. I remarked about the crowd as I was leaving and was then informed that it was the FBI. Quite the contrast to what is being reported in Dallas, that op appeared to be run in a professional manner and manned by folk who knew what they were doing.
I understand that it can be difficult to get stuff back from law enforcement, and I agree that is an issue that should be addressed.
Jeez, ya' think?
Why the hell isn't this CNN's lead story. Oh, wait. Mass murderer with a gun in New York...
So why the hell isn't this the other lead story? This is outrageous behavior on the part of law enforcement, on an almost unbelievable scale. I manage the IT infrastructure for an Internet retailer. We have gear in two (other) data centers, in Dallas. Losing that gear, for weeks, would be very costly. Yeah, we have a DR plan, but the idea of having to use it because some FBI cowboy decided he needed to seize every box in a commercial data center is outrageous in the extreme.
You can bet that I will have some hard questions for our reps at those two data centers. They and their competitors/colleagues had better be getting together and making a huge stink about this. I intend to recommend to the company principals that they contact our state and U.S. elected representatives to voice our outrage as well.
A person is guilty of eavesdropping when he unlawfully engages in wiretapping, mechanical overhearing of a conversation, or intercepting or accessing of an electronic communication.
Eavesdropping is a class E felony.
8. "Unlawfully" means not specifically authorized pursuant to article seven hundred or seven hundred five of the criminal procedure law for the purposes of this section and sections 250.05, 250.10, 250.15, 250.20, 250.25, 250.30 and 250.35 of this article.
This is assuming that the information that lead to the take down requests came from the interception of traffic between end-points. If the RIAA enforcers are keeping track of which end-point has willfully advertised content as available, and then provided that content upon request, it absolutely can not be argued that the cited laws apply.
We are making a rather large assumption here, that the ISP's are actively monitoring streams of data looking for copyrighted material despite the many legal proscriptions (it's not like we're looking for "terrorists", after all) and the formidable expense of such an operation. Someone show me that the ISP's are acting in such a fashion or STFU, already.
Yes, still the cloud.
My guess is that you don't have much experience in supporting large numbers of "...powerful workstations, desktops, and laptops..." If you did, you wouldn't make such stupid presumptions like thinking that the amount of money "invested" in that hardware is the significant cost associated with operating that hardware and the systems that depend on it.
There are many potential reasons why cloud computing may not be a good fit, but the "waste" of jettisoning legacy hardware is hardly one of them.
Your assumptions are incorrect. The meaning of any one question does not carry any weight in scoring the MMPI. You will not be "weeded out" for answering "true" to "I do not always tell the truth". Indeed, there are many questions in the inventory that are designed to gauge the subjects honesty/sincerity when answering the questions, but again, the answers to these show up as part of a pattern, not as distinct "red flags".
As for the MMPI's worth in hiring decisions, alas, all too many "consultants" sell the test as a means to determine a candidate's suitability for a position. It has as well-established lousy track record in that area. It was designed to identify pathology, something at which it has proven useful. So it can tell you that you shouldn't hire someone, period, but it can't tell you which candidate is the "best bet" for a given type of work.
If you don't like the service, don't use it. It's that simple. Nobody's forcing you to choose Apple/AT&T.
sigh..., RTFA.
This is not about "shopping". The suit is (in essence) for breach of contract. AT&T and Apple (as their agent) promised to deliver something and have failed to do so. A contract is a legal instrument that binds two or more parties. The plaintiffs' argument is that it is not reasonable for ATT/Apple to promise something like "Oh, sure. You'll have marvelous 3G bandwidth anywhere on this map...", when, in fact, the actual performance and availability is nowhere near that. Just as unreasonable is your implied contention that consumers would be able to determine the veracity of the vendors' claims prior to committing to the contract.
From: VP of Marketing, MegaTelco To: VP of Operations, MegaTelco CC: VP of Research and Development, MegaTelco
Gentlemen,
Congratulations to the R&D boys who have come up with this wonderful new technology.
Now, please make certain that this is kept under wraps for as long as possible so that we can squeeze as much money as possible out of our current customers who are paying for "special" data circuits. We'd like to continue to keep them bent over and taking it deep for as long as possible. We don't want to cannibalize our revenue stream until the competition forces us too and we are positioned to then squash that competition through a combination of lax regulation and our monopoly status. It's our wire, god dammit, and we're not going to let "innovation" give our customers anything better until we're good and ready to let them have it.
The system used to play the various pieces has a profound effect on what the listener hears. It is reasonable to assume that the researchers used a consistent platform for this, but it is not stated in the article. More importantly, well-recorded music of a given genre played back on the "wrong" platform, can sound like crap compared to a highly compressed mp3 cock-up of the same material on that same platform. I have mp3 files that sound great on my portable player through ear buds, but that same recording sounds dreadful when played through my audiophile gear. And of course the reverse is also true, some high-quality tracks that are absolutely exquisite when played through the right system, are quite unimpressive when played through my portable or car stereo.
While it is true that many listeners are unable to appreciate the differences, it is very possible that the research is flawed in that it has handicapped what discernment those users might have had by coloring the program material with the characteristics of the playback system.
Two points...
One, we were talking about a group of Danish amateur rocket builders, not "The Danes" or the country of Denmark, were we.
Two, when was the last time Denmark actually exhibited the behavior in question? And Korea? Right. Now go to your room.
I am reminded of the little contretemps that the Texas dept. of corrections found themselves in with the FDA when they first started using lethal injection to perform their many executions. The FDA's beef was that the potion had not been clinically tested and proven to be "safe and effective". IIRC, the reply was something like, "Can't be both."
Gee, I don't know...
Perhaps it is because a group of European amateurs are not a nation state, governed by a totalitarian military regime, with a demonstrated history of aggressive behavior towards their neighbors and an arguably viable program to develop nuclear weapons.
It's still a retarded move though; hulu and similar services have been drawing people away from "pirated"[sic] content and back to revenue-generating content, and now that it is hitting critical mass the content owners are shooting themselves in the foot yet again... The folks at Hulu seem caught in the middle. Who are the losers?
There, fixed that for you.
As for the winners and losers...
As a consumer, yeah, I lose something that I was getting for free. Oh well, easy come - easy go.
Hulu loses out, of course, but the big losers are the content providers. My gawd. In what world is it "just good business" to deliberately cut off a large portion of the network that delivers your revenue generating content (commercials)? Un-fucking-believable.
To answer your question, yes, there probably are a few folks in the Bible Belt states who embrace intellectual thought, diversity, etc. The noisy, white, fundamentalist faction, however, does not want to even think about those things. Alas, they have the ear of enough elected officials to make a mess of things, miring government with stupid, dogma-driven debate and laws.
The beginning of knowledge is the statement, "I don't know." Calling yourself an atheist versus calling yourself an agnostic is to choose the statement, "I know that God doesn't exist." over the statement, "I don't know whether God exists or not."
And yes, I have extensive training in both religion and science.
It shows. So, still unemployed then, are we? Sorry, I just couldn't resist...
Seriously though, well put, sir. Very well put. Would that more people, on both sides of the (god/no god) debate, understood this truth and proceeded with the humility that such an understanding properly instills in those who gain it.
Maybe scientists need to stop being so arrogant and err on the side of caution and sanctity of life.
Especially, if there is no real reason present necessitating doing otherwise.
Why is caution indicated?
Warning - that's a trick question, designed to bait the unwitting into citing some religious principle as an authoritative source of what may or may not be the best approach to a given problem. You weren't really going to fall into that trap, were you?
Also, your assertion that there is "no real reason" for (I assume that we're still talking about) stem cell research is flawed at it's base. There are innumerable reasons to pursue this and many other avenues of medical research.
I assure you that, as a Constitutional scholar, the point has not escaped me. As has been observed by others here (of the rational "ilk"), there is a vast difference between one's right to voice one's opinion and the "right" to force one's beliefs on others. That this important distinction seems to utterly escape most "social conservatives" is as telling as it is troubling. All the more reason to beat back at every turn the zealots attempts to have their ideology gain the force of law.
"When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
- Benjamin Franklin
Recently something snapped and the goal of learning about the universe was pushed back behind the goal of proving religion wrong.
Sad, but true, but probably not for the reasons you think.
That scientists are forced to pay attention to the rantings of religious zealots is an artifact of having let those zealots gain a voice in politics. It is through those politics that a significant portion of the funding for scientific research is granted. When religious ideology gains the force of law, as it very clearly did under the last presidential administration here in The States, those who pursue knowledge and reason are unavoidably enjoined in a battle with the religious ideologues, whose primacy is threatened by knowledge and reason. Well, I suppose it is avoidable, if we are willing to walk away from the means that support the actual process of learning how our world works.
In the Swat region of Pakistan, they (the religious zealots) take a much more direct approach, burning the schools and beheading the teachers and other "heretics". I'd rather it didn't come to that, so if scientists have to spend part of their time pointing out how stupid this or that made-up religious stricture is, I'll back their play.
Slashdot Mirror
You are guilty of provincialism, perhaps the most common logical fallacy. The group "regular people", if defined as those who buy their computers at retail stores and who require the "break/fix monkey" at those stores to "repair" their computers are but a subset of computer users. Drawing conclusions about all computer users and their OS choices, based on your extremely limited sample, is a mistake, to say the least.
You haven't been paying attention, have you?
Obama isn't Hitler. He's Karl Marx. And oh, by the way, there have been lots of (as in a constant, spittle-spraying stream of it) such comparisons coming out of the mouths of the usual gang of right-wing nut-jobs like Hannity, Beck, and O'Riley and that fat drug addict guy, whatsizname.
As for Bush and Hitler, for anyone who takes the time to study the history of the Third Reich before the second world war, the similarities are absolutely undeniable. No, not between Bush and Hitler. Hitler was a leader. But the government policies, toward its citizens and toward big business, are eerily similar to what we saw during the last administration.
The problem is that google is pulling them away from their own web sites where they hope to generate revenue.
I disagree. As I've observed before, I am depressingly typical in my use of the Internet for "news" stories. If anything, I tend to spend more time on wire service and print media sites than I do on those that have a talking head in a tiny window. But I digress. What don't spend any time at all doing, is cruising those wire service and print media news sites looking for stories that interest me. I let Google do that. If the "stupid suits" at The Boston Globe et all manage to stop that, I will set up my own bot to find the stuff that interests me. There's a reason I don't watch an entire newscast or subscribe to the paper anymore. Most of it is wasted on me. Despite that fact that virtually every newspaper in the U.S. devotes and entire section to "sports", I don't give a shit about stick and ball games or those that play them (comes from being a Cubs fan, I guess). Why would I want to wade through The Houston Chronicle's home page to find the stories I AM interested in?
Sorry, but that dog won't hunt.
Trying to compete with Google News, in their back yard, is a fool's errand. "Our own search..." may be a useful tool, but it is not Google News. Not by a very long and arguably insurmountable stretch.
The fact that The Boston Globe can't keep eyeballs on their site is completely and utterly the responsibility of The Boston Globe, not that of Google News. Get that part right. The "stupid suit" clearly has not, because he thinks that he can litigate or regulate his way into a competitive position that his tech guys tell him (quite accurately) that he simply can not achieve.
When it comes to what news "consumers" want, Google CEO "gets it". Old media CEO's don't. Film at eleven.
OK, so this ain't exactly news, but jeezuz, how hard is it to grasp the fact that a large number of the eyeballs viewing your "news" arrive at your web site via a link on Google news?
Hey, Eric. Cut one or two of them off for a week. Given them a heads up first, and suggest that they pay attention to their traffic numbers. Then let's all ask their board of directors what they think of how things are going when no one "steals" their content.
Or option
4. Your average FBI agent doesn't know an Ethernet Switch from a SAN Cluster, so they kind-of had to take everything.
False, at least in my limited but direct experience. I was doing some work on gear we had colo'd in a commercial data center a few years ago. The place was usually deserted but for a tech or two, but this day there was a crowd of serious looking gentlemen gathered outside a couple of cages, with a couple of obvious tech guys actually doing whatever hands on work was required. I remarked about the crowd as I was leaving and was then informed that it was the FBI. Quite the contrast to what is being reported in Dallas, that op appeared to be run in a professional manner and manned by folk who knew what they were doing.
I understand that it can be difficult to get stuff back from law enforcement, and I agree that is an issue that should be addressed.
Jeez, ya' think?
Why the hell isn't this CNN's lead story. Oh, wait. Mass murderer with a gun in New York...
So why the hell isn't this the other lead story? This is outrageous behavior on the part of law enforcement, on an almost unbelievable scale. I manage the IT infrastructure for an Internet retailer. We have gear in two (other) data centers, in Dallas. Losing that gear, for weeks, would be very costly. Yeah, we have a DR plan, but the idea of having to use it because some FBI cowboy decided he needed to seize every box in a commercial data center is outrageous in the extreme.
You can bet that I will have some hard questions for our reps at those two data centers. They and their competitors/colleagues had better be getting together and making a huge stink about this. I intend to recommend to the company principals that they contact our state and U.S. elected representatives to voice our outrage as well.
No more biased than any of the other stations.
They all have agendas.
True, but relatively few of them have the unmitigated gall to refer to themselves as "Fair and Balanced ® "
In New York State that would be a felony:
250.05 Eavesdropping.
A person is guilty of eavesdropping when he unlawfully engages in wiretapping, mechanical overhearing of a conversation, or intercepting or accessing of an electronic communication. Eavesdropping is a class E felony.
8. "Unlawfully" means not specifically authorized pursuant to article seven hundred or seven hundred five of the criminal procedure law for the purposes of this section and sections 250.05, 250.10, 250.15, 250.20, 250.25, 250.30 and 250.35 of this article.
This is assuming that the information that lead to the take down requests came from the interception of traffic between end-points. If the RIAA enforcers are keeping track of which end-point has willfully advertised content as available, and then provided that content upon request, it absolutely can not be argued that the cited laws apply.
We are making a rather large assumption here, that the ISP's are actively monitoring streams of data looking for copyrighted material despite the many legal proscriptions (it's not like we're looking for "terrorists", after all) and the formidable expense of such an operation. Someone show me that the ISP's are acting in such a fashion or STFU, already.
My guess is that you don't have much experience in supporting large numbers of "...powerful workstations, desktops, and laptops..." If you did, you wouldn't make such stupid presumptions like thinking that the amount of money "invested" in that hardware is the significant cost associated with operating that hardware and the systems that depend on it.
There are many potential reasons why cloud computing may not be a good fit, but the "waste" of jettisoning legacy hardware is hardly one of them.
As for the MMPI's worth in hiring decisions, alas, all too many "consultants" sell the test as a means to determine a candidate's suitability for a position. It has as well-established lousy track record in that area. It was designed to identify pathology, something at which it has proven useful. So it can tell you that you shouldn't hire someone, period, but it can't tell you which candidate is the "best bet" for a given type of work.
If you don't like the service, don't use it. It's that simple. Nobody's forcing you to choose Apple/AT&T.
sigh..., RTFA.
This is not about "shopping". The suit is (in essence) for breach of contract. AT&T and Apple (as their agent) promised to deliver something and have failed to do so. A contract is a legal instrument that binds two or more parties. The plaintiffs' argument is that it is not reasonable for ATT/Apple to promise something like "Oh, sure. You'll have marvelous 3G bandwidth anywhere on this map...", when, in fact, the actual performance and availability is nowhere near that. Just as unreasonable is your implied contention that consumers would be able to determine the veracity of the vendors' claims prior to committing to the contract.
To: VP of Operations, MegaTelco
CC: VP of Research and Development, MegaTelco
Gentlemen,
Congratulations to the R&D boys who have come up with this wonderful new technology.
Now, please make certain that this is kept under wraps for as long as possible so that we can squeeze as much money as possible out of our current customers who are paying for "special" data circuits. We'd like to continue to keep them bent over and taking it deep for as long as possible. We don't want to cannibalize our revenue stream until the competition forces us too and we are positioned to then squash that competition through a combination of lax regulation and our monopoly status. It's our wire, god dammit, and we're not going to let "innovation" give our customers anything better until we're good and ready to let them have it.
The system used to play the various pieces has a profound effect on what the listener hears. It is reasonable to assume that the researchers used a consistent platform for this, but it is not stated in the article. More importantly, well-recorded music of a given genre played back on the "wrong" platform, can sound like crap compared to a highly compressed mp3 cock-up of the same material on that same platform. I have mp3 files that sound great on my portable player through ear buds, but that same recording sounds dreadful when played through my audiophile gear. And of course the reverse is also true, some high-quality tracks that are absolutely exquisite when played through the right system, are quite unimpressive when played through my portable or car stereo.
While it is true that many listeners are unable to appreciate the differences, it is very possible that the research is flawed in that it has handicapped what discernment those users might have had by coloring the program material with the characteristics of the playback system.
Two points...
One, we were talking about a group of Danish amateur rocket builders, not "The Danes" or the country of Denmark, were we.
Two, when was the last time Denmark actually exhibited the behavior in question? And Korea?
Right. Now go to your room.
I am reminded of the little contretemps that the Texas dept. of corrections found themselves in with the FDA when they first started using lethal injection to perform their many executions. The FDA's beef was that the potion had not been clinically tested and proven to be "safe and effective". IIRC, the reply was something like, "Can't be both."
Gee, I don't know...
Perhaps it is because a group of European amateurs are not a nation state, governed by a totalitarian military regime, with a demonstrated history of aggressive behavior towards their neighbors and an arguably viable program to develop nuclear weapons.
It's still a retarded move though; hulu and similar services have been drawing people away from "pirated"[sic] content and back to revenue-generating content, and now that it is hitting critical mass the content owners are shooting themselves in the foot yet again ... The folks at Hulu seem caught in the middle. Who are the losers?
There, fixed that for you.
As for the winners and losers... As a consumer, yeah, I lose something that I was getting for free. Oh well, easy come - easy go. Hulu loses out, of course, but the big losers are the content providers. My gawd. In what world is it "just good business" to deliberately cut off a large portion of the network that delivers your revenue generating content (commercials)? Un-fucking-believable.
To answer your question, yes, there probably are a few folks in the Bible Belt states who embrace intellectual thought, diversity, etc. The noisy, white, fundamentalist faction, however, does not want to even think about those things. Alas, they have the ear of enough elected officials to make a mess of things, miring government with stupid, dogma-driven debate and laws.
Speaking of hysteria...
This is more about giving the polititians cover to continue the cost overruns.
Really? And what evidence, beyond some borderline-paranoid, agenda-driven conjecture do you have to support this remarkable assertion?
Who Cares ????...... i don't...
Why do "conservatives" hate America?
The beginning of knowledge is the statement, "I don't know." Calling yourself an atheist versus calling yourself an agnostic is to choose the statement, "I know that God doesn't exist." over the statement, "I don't know whether God exists or not."
And yes, I have extensive training in both religion and science.
It shows. So, still unemployed then, are we?
Sorry, I just couldn't resist...
Seriously though, well put, sir. Very well put. Would that more people, on both sides of the (god/no god) debate, understood this truth and proceeded with the humility that such an understanding properly instills in those who gain it.
Maybe scientists need to stop being so arrogant and err on the side of caution and sanctity of life.
Especially, if there is no real reason present necessitating doing otherwise.
Why is caution indicated?
Warning - that's a trick question, designed to bait the unwitting into citing some religious principle as an authoritative source of what may or may not be the best approach to a given problem. You weren't really going to fall into that trap, were you?
Also, your assertion that there is "no real reason" for (I assume that we're still talking about) stem cell research is flawed at it's base. There are innumerable reasons to pursue this and many other avenues of medical research.
I assure you that, as a Constitutional scholar, the point has not escaped me. As has been observed by others here (of the rational "ilk"), there is a vast difference between one's right to voice one's opinion and the "right" to force one's beliefs on others. That this important distinction seems to utterly escape most "social conservatives" is as telling as it is troubling. All the more reason to beat back at every turn the zealots attempts to have their ideology gain the force of law.
"When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
- Benjamin Franklin
Recently something snapped and the goal of learning about the universe was pushed back behind the goal of proving religion wrong.
Sad, but true, but probably not for the reasons you think. That scientists are forced to pay attention to the rantings of religious zealots is an artifact of having let those zealots gain a voice in politics. It is through those politics that a significant portion of the funding for scientific research is granted. When religious ideology gains the force of law, as it very clearly did under the last presidential administration here in The States, those who pursue knowledge and reason are unavoidably enjoined in a battle with the religious ideologues, whose primacy is threatened by knowledge and reason. Well, I suppose it is avoidable, if we are willing to walk away from the means that support the actual process of learning how our world works. In the Swat region of Pakistan, they (the religious zealots) take a much more direct approach, burning the schools and beheading the teachers and other "heretics". I'd rather it didn't come to that, so if scientists have to spend part of their time pointing out how stupid this or that made-up religious stricture is, I'll back their play.