Maybe your wife learning about how much of the family's finances go into your hitherto unknown porn habit? Your tax preparer asking you to describe what "tentacle porn" is all about, and then getting rid of you as a customer after doing a Google search? Or how about someone questioning the relationship between the "lolicon.org" deductions and those child tax credits the two of you are claiming? Or maybe you're just a guy who's been downloading perfectly ordinary titty porn, but your legal partner is the same sex you are?
Geez. Use you our imagination. Or after reading the above, don't.
Well, the DMCA case is an example, but the article's focus is the increasing number of differnt kinds of court cases arising out of the conflict between the 1996 Telecommunications Act which offers broad immunity for web hosters, and other existing legislation that may have nothing to do with telecommunications but may be relevant, if not applicable.
The clearest example, I think, is one which doesn't center on "anonymous" content on blogs or similar sites, but the roommates.com case. There, the website was found to be in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act because it asked questions about race and then used that profile information. A related quote:
"If such questions are unlawful when posed face-to-face or by telephone, they don't magically become lawful when asked electronically online," Kozinski wrote. "The Communications Decency Act was not meant to create a lawless no man's land on the Internet."
Seems fair enough when put in that light. Unless you're looking for a hot black chick as a roommate, for example, and are prevented from finding one using the services of a website which is subject to a set or rules similar to what a landlord has to abide by.
Personally, I expect the subject to get even more complicated over time as laws are reinterpreted, written and rewritten to address digital age.
My only concern with this type of approach is how hamstrung will we get when the first protesters arrive?
No worries. The biochemists studying this work at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and McNeese State University in Lake Charles, both in Louisiana. If you ever been to that part of the south, you'd know they'd rather eat the things only slightly more than they'd prefer shoot them, or use them to make handbags, belts and shoes.
Can we replicate it or at least identify WHY it is so useful or different?
If we can't, we'll have to turn to someone like Emeril Lagasse for an alternative, more spicy, use. At any rate, the article is fairly interesting. Maybe they should adopt a slogan like "Alligators: Good, and Good for You." to get things going.
Does this mean we might be able to get a tax deduction for pr0n?
Only if you're filing as an individual. If you're filing jointly, you have bigger problems than your tax liability.
I've been trying without success to claim deductions for blackjack and hookers for years, so my advice is to just pay up. And don't forget to leave a tip.
This is a fine idea - The internet is a treacherous place for children.
The web, in general, may be an inappropriate venue for a young child, but it's hardly treacherous. In fact, I'd say that the risk of being targeted and hunted down in some manner is probably far less than your local playground. Which is to say the risk is small enough to put aside, and hardly something that merits the exaggerated press coverage, let alone the subject of a government mandated safety policy.
Besides, if a child of any age is inclined to participate in "chat rooms", then they'll have plenty of supervisory company from law enforcement officials and TV celebrities.
What would real Internet Safety Program look like? I'd start with something that includes unhiding file extensions on Windows systems to prevent the.exe nonsense that unlike the bogeyman, is a real and demonstrable threat.
But I'd rather see mandatory parenting.
Agreed. But they're both working, and too busy or too tired, trying to make a living. Guess the responsibility falls on the rest of us, huh?
I had lots of problems with Hotmail, and I think my mail was usually marked as spam by Yahoo until I enabled DKIM signing. With SPF records and DKIM, I don't think I have any major problems...
Yahoo allows you to request your server be whitelisted, so you could have saved yourself the trouble with DKIM and friends. I did exactly that, and my DSL-based servers send and receive email all day long without issue.
As a side note, I use Spamhaus RBLs, so my spam (predominantly from the cable dynamic IP crowd) is essentially zero. By contrast, my Yahoo accounts' bulk folders were always filled with that kind of spam, when it wasn't filled with the legitimate emails from the many mailings lists I subscribe to. Yahoo has since (a month or two ago) made changes, and from what I can see, they no longer accept email from cable users.
If there's an irony in all this it's that doing things yourself is a bit more work, but infinitely more satisfying. To say nothing of the fact that it probably works better in almost all cases.
With SPF records and DKIM, I don't think I have any major problems (though my mail server handles a pitifully small amount of mail, so its not like we're going to get marked as a bulk sender).
You don't have to be a bulk sender to end up tagged with Yahoo's X-YahooFilteredBulk, for example. It can be your very first and only mail.
Comcast seems to have found the way to kick them off of its customer rolls by self-selection (the more/. stories stoking the outrage, the better), thereby only retaining the sheep. Good business plan, as I see it.
Interesting comment. A case of bad publicity being good for business?
I wonder, though, how the folks from Comcast would feel being compelled to re-appear before Senate or Congressional committees on a regular basis. I've been watching CSPAN as long as I can remember and have yet to see someone not in the executive branch give testimony without sweating. Hell, even the oil guys get the third degree. You think a Comcast CEO could go back to his office without firing a few people and making at least some changes?
Just how Kraken is infecting machines is still unclear, but Royal says the malware seems to appear as an image file to the victim. When the victim tries to view the image, the malware is loaded onto his or her machine. "We know the picture... ends in an.exe, which is not shown" to the user, Royal says.
I definitely recognise myself in the article's description: I generally write 2 or 3 versions of an email before finally sending it and I really don't get on with IM-style communication.
You mean to say you take the time and thought required to write something worth reading?
There seems to be a trend in recent years for people to consider email another form of IM. Subscribe to mailing list with 10K users, and you'll find people repeatedly sending off unintelligible overly-abbreviated scraps of seemingly random thought without hesitation, forcing all 10K users to read and try and interpret their spew. For anyone that thinks, for example, one or more cryptic one-liners is acceptable, I'd suggest they stop and consider how many followups to followups are required when, by comparison, a coherent thought written out using complete sentences would have saved everyone both time and grief in almost all cases.
Too much trouble or time to bother with? See how well you can communicate with your significant other using postit note reminders stuck on a refrigerator door before a misunderstanding and a day spent stewing over a perceived insult occurs.
IM has its place and is no doubt useful (invaluable, even) in certain scenarios. If you accept that it's the quality of communication that matters, then the pervasive influence of IM can be characterised fairly as somewhere between an unfortunate habit and a disease. Not that there's ever been a golden age of electronic communication, of course. I do wonder how it is, though, that in a form of communication that's entirely written, people don't hesitate to offer the impression that they're either morons, or complete illiterates.
My use of IM has devolved into occasional replies of "This is worth discussing. Call me when you have time and we'll take it up then." The rest is noise. No point in trying to do accomplish something when neither party has the time to deal with it, is there?
If the usage of the OS complies with the license then surely any inadvertent behavior on the part of the OS is the responsibility of the owner (Microsoft) and not the license holder (the end user).
Well, fair enough. But put yourself in the position of anyone having even a possible say in the state of things. Consider the legislator, government agency head, law enforcement official, local politician, business owner, etc. What standard would any of them use to determine where responsibility or accountability lies, where corrective action is necessary, and what form it would take?
I'd submit the most reasonable standard is the same as what most people experience using Windows. Put another way, what comes out of Microsoft is assumed to be or otherwise adopted as the de facto universal standard of security. Viruses? Sure, people get them. Malware? Sure, people get those, too. Phishing? Who hasn't encountered a dodgy email. Security? We're working hard on it.
It's that kind of thinking and narrow perspective that underlies why few can, if so inclined, step back from the situation and ask "Isn't there a better approach?" And it's the same kind of reasoning that demands you run the latest version of Internet Explorer with updated antivirus software, even if you run OpenBSD.
Am I blaming Microsoft for the current state of affairs, or indicting them for breeding a generation of lusers? Sure. As they say, if the shoe fits. The problem is that aside from satisfying my own smugness, it jsn't very productive. And even if everyone were to agree that the responsibility rests entirely with Microsoft and go along with your licensing argument, everyone would be just as forgiving and continue on doing what they were doing.
To use an analogy, it's like a screwed up country where the populace was convinced into electing a leader that went on to make a mess of things. With everyone culpable, the only thing to do, regrettably, is to wait until the winds change, and hope the minority voices can be heard.
To login to my bank account online, I need the online account's ID, my PIN, and my secret word. In addition, I also now need my physical debit card, a card reader, and to enter my PIN in the reader and get back a code to enter for login. Not much chance of someone randomly getting in by guessing all those.
Not if they're the same as the combination on your luggage.
Seriously, does anyone get their 'news' from blogs?
I'm sure a small minority do (in the same way that some get their news from the John Stewart Show), but the real question is why those chanting Old Media is Dead haven't yet noticed that news comes from, and will continue to come from professional reporters. You know, the folks that took the time to study journalism and are typically employed by newspapers, news organisations, and a dwindling number of media companies that can still afford them?
Granted they can be interesting and helpful...
Indeed. They do have a contribution to make, but usually that's in the form of commentary, added background or trivia, or even some personal insight. At their best they also provide links to some authoritive reporting, and at worst, incestuous links to other blogs.
Bloggers complaining about stress should visit a real news room. They might discover that the act of reporting (or the writing part of it) is a lot harder than sitting in a Starbucks with a Mac waxing poetic while contemplating current events.
I just love it when people grab any occasion to try to sue as much money as they can from large (and rich) companies, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.
And I just love it when people make inflammatory, knee-jerk statements (and then get modded as "insightful" by those similarly inclined) suggesting that a lawuit of $25K is the same as as much as they can, then go on to imply that the basis for that suit was a large (and rich) compan[y].
Look, their residence was on a private road. Chances are if you value your privacy, this is where you'd choose to live. And if you can afford to live there, chances are equally good that you'd be inclined to defend that privacy. Taken in that light, bringing suit for $25K is as low as it is fair, even more so considering it would cause financial hardship to no one, but could make up for your perceived invasion of privacy.
There are some real (and interesting) issues in this case. Your post contributes nothing but noise to that discussion.
Many grammar weenies would vehemently disagree with me.
Not with your argument, but we would have trouble making sense of why you think being redundant has any value, and then overlook the possibility that the intended rhetorical effect may be the opposite of what you hoped.
Put simply, if something is "unique", then say so. If you're looking to describe other qualities, reach for a thesaurus. There's no need to dumb down the language for everyone when there's lots of good words you can use.
And a similar modification for those who aren't OpenStep fans, or are otherwise interested in the content without being unecessarily distracted (several hundred times per article) by giant "Reply To" buttons?
I'd like to agree with you, but I don't believe that's true.
The reason why advertising exists and is prevalent as it is is that we, the great unwashed masses are happy to tolerate it, and obligingly participate in it, all with little or no thought. You could argue, for example, that the blight that exists on a city's buildings and infrastructure saves a few dollars for taxpayers, but hell, we've gotten to the point we erect building and monuments to the stuff. When we're not queuing up at the Staples Center, we're wearing baseball caps, T-shirts and tatoos with brand names of all sorts plastered on them, sitting through a full evening's worth of advertiser-supported TV (singing along to commercials when inclined), and asking our doctors about the Celebrex. And we like it! You think we'd enjoy our purchases as much if we weren't repeatedly told how good they really were?
There's conclusions to be drawn from an uninformed populace that not only lacks the ability to think critically but also lacks the discipline to practise it, but in the meantime, the entertainment value of being distracted by an advertiser's promises of better things is welcomed with open arms. We don't object to defining ourselves as "consumers", because anything else is, well, we'd rather not go there.
For now, the web is a bit different insofar as screen real estate and technological limitations provide a check to the wholesale acceptance that exists on TV, for example. But I doubt that state of affairs will last indefinitely.
Maybe it's just me... but is anyone else really tired of the Fisher-Price trending in desktop operating systems.
Yes.
The unwashed masses, however, are attracted to bight and shiny colours, and those trying to get real work done most likely have learned to ignore the issue. To make matter worse, most people commenting on the issue assume that the choices are between crude and ugly (circa 1997), on the one hand, and flashy, on the other. The dichotomy is patently absurd to anyone with even a minimal background or appreciation of design. Steve Jobs' own taste may be refined and sophisticated, but what you get with a Mac is still tarted up for broader appeal.
Subtlety, it seems, is too much to ask. Or presents too great a challenge for the average user.
So, if it helps, yeah, XP's default Luna theme is insulting to my intelligence. The 'noir' theme is better, but that's not saying much. The plainness of Gnome is preferable to the circus known as KDE, but Gnome is hardly a choice I would make if there were real options, to say nothing of its painful lack of configurability. The available themes for either typically range from crude to goofy to goofier still. Face it. They all suck.
My own approach is to use Fluxbox and do everything in a terminal. In those cases where I need a GUI app, I hide all the toolbars or at least keep the icons as small or as unobtrusive as possible. Ironically, on a Windows system, running something like Litestep in combination with a carefully chosen Windowblinds theme may yield better results, but then, you're crippled by using Windows.
Well, windows explorer could record it in memory. It is not like you can close down explorer, run it again and use the back button, so why does it need to store it anywhere over than in its own memory.
I cited a trivial example, but that said, there's numerous (countless, perhaps) places where history of all sorts is typically recorded, by Windows Explorer, by the Run or Open With dialog boxes, by different parts of Windows, by installed applications, and so on. Most people rely on such things as their Start Menu and drop-down lists being populated with information, their file open dialog boxes being rooted in a certain directory, their Explorer windows maintaining per-directory customisations, and so on.
The real answer to your question is "It doesn't" (at least with respect to what's exposed), but people seem to want Windows to anticipate their next move, and Windows tries its best to accommodate that desire by dutifully tracking anything and everything where possible in an effort to "optimise" things for the user.
Is it an invasion of privacy, simply annoying, or is all this interconnectedness a prerequisite for any desktop environment? Judge for yourself, but this is how Windows work. Personally, I find it absurd and useless.
That's because male attractiveness is graded on a curve, the curve set by wealth, power, and social position.
I'm not an expert of male attractiveness, nor do I play one on Slashdot, but I imagine similar factors (absence of damage, proportionality of features, symmetry on the vertical plane, etc.) would play a similar enough role. That said, there have been plenty of studies showing that the "attractiveness" of a male's face corresponds to the menstrual cycle of the female: during ovulation, the "rugged and handsome" look is preferrable to "nice and well-shaved" whereas the inverse is generally true at other times.
As for "wealthy and powerful", I guess that could similarly depend on the financial and social status of the female. I prefer to consider it a truism in the same way that in the wild, it's typically the biggest, strongest, or the one with the most goodies that gets the opportunity to mate.
A side note for anyone cherishing the notion that everything is relative or personal, and there can be no standard of attractiveness. Even across disparate cultures where such things can run into the extremes, the attractiveness value of facial symmetry, to take one example, remains universal. I remember a PBS program on the subject years back that examined the faces of famous movie stars. Turns out by taking a ruler to the face of someone like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, you'll discover both have nearly perfectly symmetrical faces. I imagine one could conclude there's some form of Golden Ratio that applies, particularly to body shapes like those of Angeline Jolie.;-)
That class, which was a 400 level State University class taught me every registry key and every hiding place Windows uses to record everything the user does. Its scary.
Hiding place?
Windows has to store the result of all your pointing and clicking and radio button selection somewhere. How do you expect the back button in Windows Explorer to work, for example, if your last visited directory wasn't recorded somewhere?
The only scary part in all this is the registry itself. Almost as bad is that if you don't have an intimate understanding of the registry, you most certainly don't understand Windows, both from an architectural perspective, and from a day to day operational one as well. And, unsurprisingly, most (sysadmins included) don't understand the registry.
I know for a fact that all the commercial software I have knowledge of is properly licensed.
That may be true, but it's never the "known knowns" that get you in trouble.;-) Either way, for a system administrator, my compliments on parsing your words as carefully as a recent member of the Justice Department appearing before a Senate subcomittee.
The question for your bosses, on the other hand, is there commercial software about which they have no knowledge that isn't properly licensed? Apparently there is. And that fact reflects badly on the public image of a company, among other things, even if the transgression occurred in someone else's division.
Newspapers provide an illusion of trust, but too much of the time that's all it is. An illusion.
Interesting comment, but isn't the very nature of trust intangible?
The people working for the newspapers aren't all that different from the people writing blogs.
Individually, perhaps, but collectively, no. Reporters have the benefit of being schooled and trained, and the nature of their assignments is proportional to their competence, experience, and reputation. There's that "trust" thing, again. Add to that layers of fact-checkers, editors and everyone else all the way up the chain to the general public, and I'd say you've got a fairly good system that ensures a reporter remains a reporter and not a blogger.
An imperfect system at times, perhaps, but what isn't? Either way, a million web surfers might help a blogger discover and make known occasional inaccuracies in reported news, or tidbits of additional information, but that hardly compares to the what's required to cover the news of the day. News that a functioning democracy requires.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I don't know.
Maybe your wife learning about how much of the family's finances go into your hitherto unknown porn habit? Your tax preparer asking you to describe what "tentacle porn" is all about, and then getting rid of you as a customer after doing a Google search? Or how about someone questioning the relationship between the "lolicon.org" deductions and those child tax credits the two of you are claiming? Or maybe you're just a guy who's been downloading perfectly ordinary titty porn, but your legal partner is the same sex you are?
Geez. Use you our imagination. Or after reading the above, don't.
The clearest example, I think, is one which doesn't center on "anonymous" content on blogs or similar sites, but the roommates.com case. There, the website was found to be in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act because it asked questions about race and then used that profile information. A related quote:
Seems fair enough when put in that light. Unless you're looking for a hot black chick as a roommate, for example, and are prevented from finding one using the services of a website which is subject to a set or rules similar to what a landlord has to abide by.
Personally, I expect the subject to get even more complicated over time as laws are reinterpreted, written and rewritten to address digital age.
My only concern with this type of approach is how hamstrung will we get when the first protesters arrive?
No worries. The biochemists studying this work at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and McNeese State University in Lake Charles, both in Louisiana. If you ever been to that part of the south, you'd know they'd rather eat the things only slightly more than they'd prefer shoot them, or use them to make handbags, belts and shoes.
Can we replicate it or at least identify WHY it is so useful or different?
If we can't, we'll have to turn to someone like Emeril Lagasse for an alternative, more spicy, use. At any rate, the article is fairly interesting. Maybe they should adopt a slogan like "Alligators: Good, and Good for You." to get things going.
Does this mean we might be able to get a tax deduction for pr0n?
Only if you're filing as an individual. If you're filing jointly, you have bigger problems than your tax liability.
I've been trying without success to claim deductions for blackjack and hookers for years, so my advice is to just pay up. And don't forget to leave a tip.
This is a fine idea - The internet is a treacherous place for children.
.exe nonsense that unlike the bogeyman, is a real and demonstrable threat.
The web, in general, may be an inappropriate venue for a young child, but it's hardly treacherous. In fact, I'd say that the risk of being targeted and hunted down in some manner is probably far less than your local playground. Which is to say the risk is small enough to put aside, and hardly something that merits the exaggerated press coverage, let alone the subject of a government mandated safety policy.
Besides, if a child of any age is inclined to participate in "chat rooms", then they'll have plenty of supervisory company from law enforcement officials and TV celebrities.
What would real Internet Safety Program look like? I'd start with something that includes unhiding file extensions on Windows systems to prevent the
But I'd rather see mandatory parenting.
Agreed. But they're both working, and too busy or too tired, trying to make a living. Guess the responsibility falls on the rest of us, huh?
I had lots of problems with Hotmail, and I think my mail was usually marked as spam by Yahoo until I enabled DKIM signing. With SPF records and DKIM, I don't think I have any major problems ...
Yahoo allows you to request your server be whitelisted, so you could have saved yourself the trouble with DKIM and friends. I did exactly that, and my DSL-based servers send and receive email all day long without issue.
As a side note, I use Spamhaus RBLs, so my spam (predominantly from the cable dynamic IP crowd) is essentially zero. By contrast, my Yahoo accounts' bulk folders were always filled with that kind of spam, when it wasn't filled with the legitimate emails from the many mailings lists I subscribe to. Yahoo has since (a month or two ago) made changes, and from what I can see, they no longer accept email from cable users.
If there's an irony in all this it's that doing things yourself is a bit more work, but infinitely more satisfying. To say nothing of the fact that it probably works better in almost all cases.
With SPF records and DKIM, I don't think I have any major problems (though my mail server handles a pitifully small amount of mail, so its not like we're going to get marked as a bulk sender).
You don't have to be a bulk sender to end up tagged with Yahoo's X-YahooFilteredBulk, for example. It can be your very first and only mail.
Comcast seems to have found the way to kick them off of its customer rolls by self-selection (the more /. stories stoking the outrage, the better), thereby only retaining the sheep. Good business plan, as I see it.
Interesting comment. A case of bad publicity being good for business?
I wonder, though, how the folks from Comcast would feel being compelled to re-appear before Senate or Congressional committees on a regular basis. I've been watching CSPAN as long as I can remember and have yet to see someone not in the executive branch give testimony without sweating. Hell, even the oil guys get the third degree. You think a Comcast CEO could go back to his office without firing a few people and making at least some changes?
Throttling wouldn't be so bad if you could just opt out of it.
Indeed. If we were talking about throttling.
Which we're not.
If the article didn't make that clear, this wiki link might help.
There just aren't enough words.
I definitely recognise myself in the article's description: I generally write 2 or 3 versions of an email before finally sending it and I really don't get on with IM-style communication.
You mean to say you take the time and thought required to write something worth reading?
There seems to be a trend in recent years for people to consider email another form of IM. Subscribe to mailing list with 10K users, and you'll find people repeatedly sending off unintelligible overly-abbreviated scraps of seemingly random thought without hesitation, forcing all 10K users to read and try and interpret their spew. For anyone that thinks, for example, one or more cryptic one-liners is acceptable, I'd suggest they stop and consider how many followups to followups are required when, by comparison, a coherent thought written out using complete sentences would have saved everyone both time and grief in almost all cases.
Too much trouble or time to bother with? See how well you can communicate with your significant other using postit note reminders stuck on a refrigerator door before a misunderstanding and a day spent stewing over a perceived insult occurs.
IM has its place and is no doubt useful (invaluable, even) in certain scenarios. If you accept that it's the quality of communication that matters, then the pervasive influence of IM can be characterised fairly as somewhere between an unfortunate habit and a disease. Not that there's ever been a golden age of electronic communication, of course. I do wonder how it is, though, that in a form of communication that's entirely written, people don't hesitate to offer the impression that they're either morons, or complete illiterates.
My use of IM has devolved into occasional replies of "This is worth discussing. Call me when you have time and we'll take it up then." The rest is noise. No point in trying to do accomplish something when neither party has the time to deal with it, is there?
If the usage of the OS complies with the license then surely any inadvertent behavior on the part of the OS is the responsibility of the owner (Microsoft) and not the license holder (the end user).
Well, fair enough. But put yourself in the position of anyone having even a possible say in the state of things. Consider the legislator, government agency head, law enforcement official, local politician, business owner, etc. What standard would any of them use to determine where responsibility or accountability lies, where corrective action is necessary, and what form it would take?
I'd submit the most reasonable standard is the same as what most people experience using Windows. Put another way, what comes out of Microsoft is assumed to be or otherwise adopted as the de facto universal standard of security. Viruses? Sure, people get them. Malware? Sure, people get those, too. Phishing? Who hasn't encountered a dodgy email. Security? We're working hard on it.
It's that kind of thinking and narrow perspective that underlies why few can, if so inclined, step back from the situation and ask "Isn't there a better approach?" And it's the same kind of reasoning that demands you run the latest version of Internet Explorer with updated antivirus software, even if you run OpenBSD.
Am I blaming Microsoft for the current state of affairs, or indicting them for breeding a generation of lusers? Sure. As they say, if the shoe fits. The problem is that aside from satisfying my own smugness, it jsn't very productive. And even if everyone were to agree that the responsibility rests entirely with Microsoft and go along with your licensing argument, everyone would be just as forgiving and continue on doing what they were doing.
To use an analogy, it's like a screwed up country where the populace was convinced into electing a leader that went on to make a mess of things. With everyone culpable, the only thing to do, regrettably, is to wait until the winds change, and hope the minority voices can be heard.
To login to my bank account online, I need the online account's ID, my PIN, and my secret word. In addition, I also now need my physical debit card, a card reader, and to enter my PIN in the reader and get back a code to enter for login. Not much chance of someone randomly getting in by guessing all those.
Not if they're the same as the combination on your luggage.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Seriously, does anyone get their 'news' from blogs?
...
I'm sure a small minority do (in the same way that some get their news from the John Stewart Show), but the real question is why those chanting Old Media is Dead haven't yet noticed that news comes from, and will continue to come from professional reporters. You know, the folks that took the time to study journalism and are typically employed by newspapers, news organisations, and a dwindling number of media companies that can still afford them?
Granted they can be interesting and helpful
Indeed. They do have a contribution to make, but usually that's in the form of commentary, added background or trivia, or even some personal insight. At their best they also provide links to some authoritive reporting, and at worst, incestuous links to other blogs.
Bloggers complaining about stress should visit a real news room. They might discover that the act of reporting (or the writing part of it) is a lot harder than sitting in a Starbucks with a Mac waxing poetic while contemplating current events.
I just love it when people grab any occasion to try to sue as much money as they can from large (and rich) companies, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.
And I just love it when people make inflammatory, knee-jerk statements (and then get modded as "insightful" by those similarly inclined) suggesting that a lawuit of $25K is the same as as much as they can, then go on to imply that the basis for that suit was a large (and rich) compan[y].
Look, their residence was on a private road. Chances are if you value your privacy, this is where you'd choose to live. And if you can afford to live there, chances are equally good that you'd be inclined to defend that privacy. Taken in that light, bringing suit for $25K is as low as it is fair, even more so considering it would cause financial hardship to no one, but could make up for your perceived invasion of privacy.
There are some real (and interesting) issues in this case. Your post contributes nothing but noise to that discussion.
Many grammar weenies would vehemently disagree with me.
Not with your argument, but we would have trouble making sense of why you think being redundant has any value, and then overlook the possibility that the intended rhetorical effect may be the opposite of what you hoped.
Put simply, if something is "unique", then say so. If you're looking to describe other qualities, reach for a thesaurus. There's no need to dumb down the language for everyone when there's lots of good words you can use.
--
Grammar Weenie
Damn you, that's what I thought when I read the summary. Get out of my head!
It's the Informational Retrieval folks you have to worry about.
I think the OP is with Information Dissemination, so no worries.
padding-bottom: 0 !important;
}
And a similar modification for those who aren't OpenStep fans, or are otherwise interested in the content without being unecessarily distracted (several hundred times per article) by giant "Reply To" buttons?
It's technology is called SharePoint.
No, Sharepoint is marketing brand name, notable for being refreshingly brief.
The technologies, on the other hand, are actually ASP.NET applications, which are served using IIS and use a SQL Server database as data storage backend.
Stuff is integrated with it? I'm shocked. Shocked, I'll tell you.
Nobody likes advertising. Period.
I'd like to agree with you, but I don't believe that's true.
The reason why advertising exists and is prevalent as it is is that we, the great unwashed masses are happy to tolerate it, and obligingly participate in it, all with little or no thought. You could argue, for example, that the blight that exists on a city's buildings and infrastructure saves a few dollars for taxpayers, but hell, we've gotten to the point we erect building and monuments to the stuff. When we're not queuing up at the Staples Center, we're wearing baseball caps, T-shirts and tatoos with brand names of all sorts plastered on them, sitting through a full evening's worth of advertiser-supported TV (singing along to commercials when inclined), and asking our doctors about the Celebrex. And we like it! You think we'd enjoy our purchases as much if we weren't repeatedly told how good they really were?
There's conclusions to be drawn from an uninformed populace that not only lacks the ability to think critically but also lacks the discipline to practise it, but in the meantime, the entertainment value of being distracted by an advertiser's promises of better things is welcomed with open arms. We don't object to defining ourselves as "consumers", because anything else is, well, we'd rather not go there.
For now, the web is a bit different insofar as screen real estate and technological limitations provide a check to the wholesale acceptance that exists on TV, for example. But I doubt that state of affairs will last indefinitely.
Maybe it's just me... but is anyone else really tired of the Fisher-Price trending in desktop operating systems.
Yes.
The unwashed masses, however, are attracted to bight and shiny colours, and those trying to get real work done most likely have learned to ignore the issue. To make matter worse, most people commenting on the issue assume that the choices are between crude and ugly (circa 1997), on the one hand, and flashy, on the other. The dichotomy is patently absurd to anyone with even a minimal background or appreciation of design. Steve Jobs' own taste may be refined and sophisticated, but what you get with a Mac is still tarted up for broader appeal.
Subtlety, it seems, is too much to ask. Or presents too great a challenge for the average user.
So, if it helps, yeah, XP's default Luna theme is insulting to my intelligence. The 'noir' theme is better, but that's not saying much. The plainness of Gnome is preferable to the circus known as KDE, but Gnome is hardly a choice I would make if there were real options, to say nothing of its painful lack of configurability. The available themes for either typically range from crude to goofy to goofier still. Face it. They all suck.
My own approach is to use Fluxbox and do everything in a terminal. In those cases where I need a GUI app, I hide all the toolbars or at least keep the icons as small or as unobtrusive as possible. Ironically, on a Windows system, running something like Litestep in combination with a carefully chosen Windowblinds theme may yield better results, but then, you're crippled by using Windows.
Well, windows explorer could record it in memory. It is not like you can close down explorer, run it again and use the back button, so why does it need to store it anywhere over than in its own memory.
I cited a trivial example, but that said, there's numerous (countless, perhaps) places where history of all sorts is typically recorded, by Windows Explorer, by the Run or Open With dialog boxes, by different parts of Windows, by installed applications, and so on. Most people rely on such things as their Start Menu and drop-down lists being populated with information, their file open dialog boxes being rooted in a certain directory, their Explorer windows maintaining per-directory customisations, and so on.
The real answer to your question is "It doesn't" (at least with respect to what's exposed), but people seem to want Windows to anticipate their next move, and Windows tries its best to accommodate that desire by dutifully tracking anything and everything where possible in an effort to "optimise" things for the user.
Is it an invasion of privacy, simply annoying, or is all this interconnectedness a prerequisite for any desktop environment? Judge for yourself, but this is how Windows work. Personally, I find it absurd and useless.
That's because male attractiveness is graded on a curve, the curve set by wealth, power, and social position.
;-)
I'm not an expert of male attractiveness, nor do I play one on Slashdot, but I imagine similar factors (absence of damage, proportionality of features, symmetry on the vertical plane, etc.) would play a similar enough role. That said, there have been plenty of studies showing that the "attractiveness" of a male's face corresponds to the menstrual cycle of the female: during ovulation, the "rugged and handsome" look is preferrable to "nice and well-shaved" whereas the inverse is generally true at other times.
As for "wealthy and powerful", I guess that could similarly depend on the financial and social status of the female. I prefer to consider it a truism in the same way that in the wild, it's typically the biggest, strongest, or the one with the most goodies that gets the opportunity to mate.
A side note for anyone cherishing the notion that everything is relative or personal, and there can be no standard of attractiveness. Even across disparate cultures where such things can run into the extremes, the attractiveness value of facial symmetry, to take one example, remains universal. I remember a PBS program on the subject years back that examined the faces of famous movie stars. Turns out by taking a ruler to the face of someone like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, you'll discover both have nearly perfectly symmetrical faces. I imagine one could conclude there's some form of Golden Ratio that applies, particularly to body shapes like those of Angeline Jolie.
That class, which was a 400 level State University class taught me every registry key and every hiding place Windows uses to record everything the user does. Its scary.
Hiding place?
Windows has to store the result of all your pointing and clicking and radio button selection somewhere. How do you expect the back button in Windows Explorer to work, for example, if your last visited directory wasn't recorded somewhere?
The only scary part in all this is the registry itself. Almost as bad is that if you don't have an intimate understanding of the registry, you most certainly don't understand Windows, both from an architectural perspective, and from a day to day operational one as well. And, unsurprisingly, most (sysadmins included) don't understand the registry.
I know for a fact that all the commercial software I have knowledge of is properly licensed.
;-) Either way, for a system administrator, my compliments on parsing your words as carefully as a recent member of the Justice Department appearing before a Senate subcomittee.
That may be true, but it's never the "known knowns" that get you in trouble.
The question for your bosses, on the other hand, is there commercial software about which they have no knowledge that isn't properly licensed? Apparently there is. And that fact reflects badly on the public image of a company, among other things, even if the transgression occurred in someone else's division.
Newspapers provide an illusion of trust, but too much of the time that's all it is. An illusion.
Interesting comment, but isn't the very nature of trust intangible?
The people working for the newspapers aren't all that different from the people writing blogs.
Individually, perhaps, but collectively, no. Reporters have the benefit of being schooled and trained, and the nature of their assignments is proportional to their competence, experience, and reputation. There's that "trust" thing, again. Add to that layers of fact-checkers, editors and everyone else all the way up the chain to the general public, and I'd say you've got a fairly good system that ensures a reporter remains a reporter and not a blogger.
An imperfect system at times, perhaps, but what isn't? Either way, a million web surfers might help a blogger discover and make known occasional inaccuracies in reported news, or tidbits of additional information, but that hardly compares to the what's required to cover the news of the day. News that a functioning democracy requires.