"they still should enjoy the basic constitutional rights that all Americans have."
That is so naive I hardly know where to start.
If the Marine Corps determines that a particular site will lower troop morale, then I would hope that they'd block it. Failing that, they should cut off web access, cable news, or whatever it takes to keep the blinders on. A Marine who doubts is one who dies.
And I want the ones on the other side to die.
Someone in the military, especially in time of war, lives a different life, under a different set of rules. They have less liberty. They have to cut their hair. If they are late to work or tell the boss off, they can go to jail.
On the other hand, they can get in a fight with their coworker and the boss just asks who won and tells them not to waste time. Or he knocks their heads together and makes them run 10 miles holding hands. Or they get the book thrown at them.
The last thing a Marine needs is to be given civilian rights, and thus be judged by civilian standards. He has to think differently, so that when the time comes he won't hesitate to rip his bayonet through the throat of his enemy.
Researchers at clandestine research labs in bases hidden deep in the Russian Alps have attempted to analyze portions of the leaked Internet Information Server (IIS) and Windows Vista code for similar flaws.
The findings were remarkable. They found 4,669 flaws, but since they didn't have the source code it resulted in a divide-by-zero error when they calculated the statistics on their Excel spreadsheet. The error triggered an unheard-of lockup on their Windows XP desktop.
On a positive note, recovering from the error alerted them to the presence of 43 strains of the MyDoom virus, 257 instances of Alexis spyware, and a bootleg copy of "Making of the Britney Spears Sonogram".
buy into all this targeted marketing, buzz-phrase generating, social engineering bullshit.
I call the spam sending, search engine optimizing, phony privacy statement crowd "parasuits". I used to call them "suitwankers", but that's a little edgy for some people, and doesn't get the point across as well.
in order to enhance the company's image with youth.
That's the point. If your company's image is an important part of making money in your other ventures, then the vehicle you use to do that doesn't have to make money. If it does, or even just supports itself, so much the better. It's like getting other companies to pay for your commercials.
And this Internet thing might just amount to something.
Most schools in the U.S. are run autonomously. Typically there's a "technology" instructor, or maybe a single sysadmin split among two or three schools, or some combination.
Schools are subject to school boards and parents. Parents are hypersensitive about little Janie and Johnny getting behind, and they don't want anything that means Janie or Johnny won't have the most popular thing. The system is extremely risk-intolerant, ruled by the LCD. Individual parents may be smart, but get them together and you can't tell.
Until there is a local company to promise support and a turnkey solution at a significant cost savings, coupled with a good marketing campaign to tell parents that it's okay, that Johnny and Janie will be better off with OSS, schools will continue to be breeding grounds for the Microsoft plague.
Under Moore's Law, the price of computing power halves every 18 months. So that means in 5 years, the price ought to be about 1/(2^(5/1.5)) =~ a tenth of that.
That means in five years I'll be able to afford it on my desktop for about what I make an hour.
Woohoo!
I hope it comes with a better mouse. I have one of those mechanical ones, and it keeps getting granola in it.
There is a whole secondary industry devoted to buying and selling student loans. By law they're not allowed to raise your interest rate, which is generally about what you'd pay for a car loan. It's deferred until you're no longer in school (with loopholes for some teachers, volunteers, military, etc.).
The loan market works like other loan markets. An interesting feature of these loans, though, are that if you default they can go after your tax refund or even get a lien on your paycheck. (In the U.S., money is taken out of worker's paychecks to pre-pay income taxes, and if there is an overage you get money back. That refund makes people tolerate the system, since they think they're getting a gift from the government.) Also, the loans follow you through bankruptcy.
Some states don't participate in the secondary markets, and some only partially do (selling your loan if you move out of state, for example).
The big reason companies want to buy student loans is that they can sell you a consolidation loan, which doesn't have the same features as a regular student loan. The consolidation loans carry a lower nominal interest rate, which the fine print says will go up in six months or balloon to some outrageous figure like 29% if you skip a payment.
All of this blather about getting your site ranked by the search engines, adviews, and people setting up sites just to get ad revenue so companies can sell products to people who don't really want them is a sickness.
Companies are so interested in this week's figures that they forget to make good stuff that people want. It's way easier to listen to some parasuit telling you in 50 buzzwords or less that he can make you lots of money right now.
And it's easier to plagiarize, change the wording here and there, and get your page ranked high than it is to come up with something new. And people don't seem to want quality any more anyway, they want cheap, fast, and easy.
According to this study (Google html), students who use laptops change their study habits:
Student outcomes include:
Laptop students spend more time engaging in collaborative work
than non-laptop students
Laptop students participate in more project-based instruction
Laptops lead to more student writing and to writing of higher
quality
Laptops increase access to information and improve research
analysis skills
Laptop students become collaborators (interact with each other
about their work)
Laptop students direct their own learning
Laptop students report a greater reliance on active learning
strategies
Laptop students readily engage in problem solving and critical
thinking
Laptop students consistently show deeper and more flexible uses
of technology
Laptop students spend more time doing homework on
computers
Some of that is ok, and some of it I'd say is actually negative, but none of it strikes me as justification for demanding that all students have laptops. What is their real motivation for requiring laptops?
I think it's a lot of herd behavior. Everybody's going digital, so it must be good.
That may be true, but not in the way you mean. The NSA is apparently scouring records to see who communicates with suspected terrorists. They aren't listening in to random conversations. There's no point to it. It would be a waste of manpower, utterly fruitless, and do nothing but make everybody mad, and rightly so.
Knowing this, people in the media keep using the words "wiretapping" and "spying", to conjure images of men in unmarked vans. It's nothing but political opportunism.
The whole point is to find out who to watch, to make it worthwhile to investigate further. They're just grepping logs.
The NYT won't be satisfied until there's another major attack. Then they can point fingers some more, saying how ineffective the President was. That will sell newspapers, and their obsolete medium will last a little longer. I'm not sure which one motivates them more.
If the Chinese create their own network, what does that mean? There are some real benefits to the rest of the world.
What it means is having a limited number of gateways between the Chinese Internet and the rest of the world. Either that number will be zero or more than one. Any data exchange will doubtless be monitored and filtered to permit or deny whatever content they want to get in or come out.
I seriously doubt the number of gateways will be zero. They may try to do it with just one, if some foolish bureaucrat decrees it. But if they have a gateway you can bet it will be because there is information they want exchanged, and it will quickly become apparent that more than one is necessary.
So effectively it's just a tighter means of access control. They want to be able to clamp down on all of these newfangled Western ideas, like voting and spaghetti (oh, wait...).
The way DNS ought to work anyway is that inside of a country you don't use the top-level domain (.us or.cn), but outside you do. So in China they'd refer to Slashdot as slashdot.org.us, but in the US we'd just call is slashdot.org. Similary, domains inside china would be [something unicode].[something else unicode], but we'd say [something unicode].[something else unicode].cn.
The whole thing is just like deciding to use NAT inside your home network, and setting up a DNS system for yourself. There's no technical reason why you couldn't have millions of computers all hidden behind an addresss translator. You only need enough real, external IP addresses to make the port mapping work. If that means IP addresses are freed up, maybe that's how all countries should do it, where it's practical.
I don't see it as "fracturing" the Internet, though.
The "blog", or something like it, will be here from now on.
People for the most part disconnected from their extended family and childhood friends. The Internet makes it possible either to stay connected with them or to find a new set of people with whom to connect, based not on heredity or geography but on common interests. Email and IM don't work for finding new people, only for data exchange with old ones.
Another feature of the blog is googlability. Say it once, and anyone searching for that thought can stumble into your take on it. That blows away legacy media, as radio and TV blew away whistlestops and soapboxes. Suddenly, it's not the financial power of your boss but the content of your message that's important.
The ramifications of that are just now being felt.
I'm as much an opponent of rigged elections as anybody. But in your zeal to see black and white, you missed the point.
It's not that alerting the citizenry that a voting machine is uncertified is bad, nor even that blowing the whistle is bad. This is not a simple case of retribution against a whistleblower.
It's stealing documents that's bad. Violating attorney-client privilege is bad. Why, you ask?
Even those accused of murder and child molestation have a right to a fair trial. In fact, the more heinous the crime the more important it is to conduct the trial fairly, so as not to punish the innocent. Funny how people who otherwise know that forget it when someone they don't like, whether it's OJ Simpson or Diebold, is the accused.
Leaking documents prejudices the case, one way or another, and risks having the case thrown out. Attorneys *must* be able to discuss in secret what their strategy is, or the legal system would fall apart. The discussions between two attorneys behind the scene are not facts, they are not evidence. They are merely commentary.
The trouble is that people (jurors) cannot help but form an opinion based on some leak. "Gee, if that's what they say in private, it must be true." Possibly, if the discussion is not taken out of context by some reporter with an axe to grind or newspapers to sell. It's also possible that the typist only chose those documents that looked the worst for Diebold.
I don't want the justice system to reward people who work to thwart it, even if it means letting a guilty man go free.
They'll be easier for people to incorporate more media and maybe mobile capabilities.
The point of the blog is hidden cleverly in the word "blog" itself. It's short for "web log", of course, but the "log" comes from the Greek logos: word, talk, knowledge. It's about the written word.
There are lots and lots of tools available for dealing with the content of a file of text, but semanticising and analyzing other media, such as audio and video is much more difficult, and perhaps impossible. The problems range from creation (making sure that the content is what the author really wants to express) all the way through search, bandwidth, and archival. What is important about a particular video clip or other cruft in some blog? But the practicalities are just one problem.
There appears to be a need in humans to communicate using words. With words we can entertain, inform, and convey precisely the meaning we wish to convey, given our skill level.
Perhaps there is room for multimedia blogs. Perhaps their presence won't ruin the experience of reading someone else's take on things and giving our own. Perhaps it won't devolve into mere entertainment. Maybe people would rather speak and see their way around an argument.
But I suspect that when people start using the old campfire for putting on their plays and bullfights, we'll search out some new one around which to argue the great events of the day. Like Usenet before it and the pamphleteer's press before that, we won't be able to stop ourselves.
If WinCE becomes dominant the way it has on the desktop, then yes, there will be viruses galore.
If Linux were to become dominant, the situation wouldn't be quite as bad (fewer viruses) but the ones that came out would hit harder since fewer phones would be protected against them. Same for Java or whatever other non-Windows thing.
If the market remains splintered in terms of OS, that would hinder viruses from spreading. Most high-profile markets tend to consolidate around one or two big players, and as cell phone technology matures that will probably happen there, too.
That's why I shudder when Cingular (?) advertises the "first Treo that runs Windows programs, just like your desktop". Give me the PalmOS model, please, so I can run apps meant for PDA screens, not a 19-inch monitor.
And if WinCE dominates, I won't have to worry about viruses on PalmOS.
But once you cross that line you forever give up the ability to convince your child that violence is an unacceptable method for getting whatever you want, like respect, money, sex or if you just feel like punching someone.
Violence is sometimes necessary. If saving someone's life, such as your own, required violence would you refuse to engage in it? Whatever your answer, I don't want my kids to hesitate to use violence if some situation calls for it.
The key is instilling a value system. Your value system appears to include non-violence as an axiom, as one of its base tenets. Mine doesn't. Non-violence to me is less important than life, liberty, justice, honor, and courage, though it is more important than wealth, fame, or my own dignity. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Besides of course that in several civilized countries you are a criminal yourself.
What a ludicrous comment. If it were illegal here, I wouldn't do it here, but it still wouldn't be immoral. Basing my behavior on what's legal or illegal in some other legal jurisdiction would mean I could do nothing except pay taxes, which all governments seem to allow. Basing my morality on what's legal or illegal is the essence of popularism, which, to make a long story short, I reject.
So that is your way to show them that you are their single biggest gift? Sounds more like a helpless course of action of one who doesnt know better.
I couldn't have said it better myself -- before I had kids, that is. Sometimes, no matter how well you strategize, plan ahead, and train them, they'll rebel and demand a showdown. If you fail to use physical force at those times, you will lose their respect and have a brat to deal with. They'll think you don't care, either about them or what they do. It's weird, but I've seen it over and over again, in my own kids and others.
On the other hand, if you use physical force for mere punishment, it will lose its effectiveness and cause resentment, bitterness, and require escalation.
I think the key is consistency. If they know what to expect from you, they'll adjust to most anything.
It's behind. People don't congregate in the living room any more, around a coffee table. They live in the kitchen.
They should market it as a game room item. Trouble is, the touch-screen is going to get damaged so easily that nobody would want it in a game room. If I can't put my feet up on it or set a bowl of popcorn on it, I don't want it in the living room, either.
There's a company in Illinois that sells desks with glass tops, so you look down through the desk at the screen. Very comfortable to use. I'd think that a coffee table with a glass top like that might work better.
Using a diverse set of respondents is essential, ensuring "regression toward the mean". That's where your errors cancel if you set things up correctly.
That should have said, "Using a diverse set of respondents is essential, so that your errors cancel."
I sort of had to chuckle when Mr. Enderle said programmers don't get taught statistics. I don't know about others, but I had to take three different stats courses, though I'd call only one of them truly rigorous -- the others were just business and social science courses, which focused primarily on survey design and analysis.
But let's take his points one-by-one. Well, wait. He's done the typical trick of repeating several points with different wording, using fancy pseudo-academic fluff words. I'll lump them together:
1. Population tested is unclear (IT organizations, generic respondents, CIOs and MIS Managers?)
2. Sampling method is inconsistent, largely self-selecting, and inherently biased (i.e., not blind)
3. Respondents are not of consistent level or responsibility
4. vastly different locations and business types
Using a diverse set of respondents is essential, ensuring "regression toward the mean". That's where your errors cancel if you set things up correctly. Typical MS-sponsored studies question a group of 30 or so people with the same kind of job at the same kind of company, which guarantees a sample bias. It's like asking a bunch of soccer moms whether kids get proper nutrution. They all have the same point of view.
And I'm not exactly sure how you'd do a "blind" sample for a study like this. Survey ten thousand companies and randomly select the ones you'll report on? Not tell the respondents what the questions are about? Pfah. Either I am missing something, or Mr. Enderle is not being forthright.
6. Results -- in terms of pricing -- are outside of survey scope
7. No test ensures that respondents consistently ran both Linux and Windows-
8. A large percentage of the statistical results were Linux only
9. Conclusions are not supported by the data. There is very little Windows data, sparse enterprise data, but a great deal of anecdotal commentary.
Guess what -- Windows pricing vs. Linux pricing is not difficult to analyze, and they aren't sold the same way. Also, Windows behavior is well-known to sysadmins, and the study was about Linux, after all.
As for number 9, he's stating his conclusion as a supporting point, another neat trick. He doesn't like the results, so if the data aren't invalid (which he claimed was the case anyway) then the something must have been wrong with the way the conclusion was reached.
I know what you're thinking... did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, I've kind of lost track in all the excitement myself. But seeing as this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and will probably blow your head clean off, you have to ask yourself one question... do I feel lucky?
Life was simpler when street crooks and S.P.E.C.T.R.E. were the bad guys, and our heroes always won.
Slashdot Mirror
you must have remarkably poor technique.
The edible parts are hairless.
"they still should enjoy the basic constitutional rights that all Americans have."
That is so naive I hardly know where to start.
If the Marine Corps determines that a particular site will lower troop morale, then I would hope that they'd block it. Failing that, they should cut off web access, cable news, or whatever it takes to keep the blinders on. A Marine who doubts is one who dies.
And I want the ones on the other side to die.
Someone in the military, especially in time of war, lives a different life, under a different set of rules. They have less liberty. They have to cut their hair. If they are late to work or tell the boss off, they can go to jail.
On the other hand, they can get in a fight with their coworker and the boss just asks who won and tells them not to waste time. Or he knocks their heads together and makes them run 10 miles holding hands. Or they get the book thrown at them.
The last thing a Marine needs is to be given civilian rights, and thus be judged by civilian standards. He has to think differently, so that when the time comes he won't hesitate to rip his bayonet through the throat of his enemy.
All so you can post on Slashdot.
Researchers at clandestine research labs in bases hidden deep in the Russian Alps have attempted to analyze portions of the leaked Internet Information Server (IIS) and Windows Vista code for similar flaws.
The findings were remarkable. They found 4,669 flaws, but since they didn't have the source code it resulted in a divide-by-zero error when they calculated the statistics on their Excel spreadsheet. The error triggered an unheard-of lockup on their Windows XP desktop.
On a positive note, recovering from the error alerted them to the presence of 43 strains of the MyDoom virus, 257 instances of Alexis spyware, and a bootleg copy of "Making of the Britney Spears Sonogram".
I know the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, but the Internet is more than that.
We can punish anyone who messes with it just fine, and reward those who play nice. We don't need your help with this one, honest.
So please, keep your paws off our network. We were here first. You're new. You don't know what you're doing, and what effect you'll have.
Now, about this terrorism thing -- maybe you can think of a way to deal with it. Or maybe find a nice treaty you can advise on or something.
Almost the perfect comment.
However, you forgot to mention that poor people, women, and children will be the most affected.
I call the spam sending, search engine optimizing, phony privacy statement crowd "parasuits". I used to call them "suitwankers", but that's a little edgy for some people, and doesn't get the point across as well.
That's the point. If your company's image is an important part of making money in your other ventures, then the vehicle you use to do that doesn't have to make money. If it does, or even just supports itself, so much the better. It's like getting other companies to pay for your commercials.
And this Internet thing might just amount to something.
Most schools in the U.S. are run autonomously. Typically there's a "technology" instructor, or maybe a single sysadmin split among two or three schools, or some combination.
Schools are subject to school boards and parents. Parents are hypersensitive about little Janie and Johnny getting behind, and they don't want anything that means Janie or Johnny won't have the most popular thing. The system is extremely risk-intolerant, ruled by the LCD. Individual parents may be smart, but get them together and you can't tell.
Until there is a local company to promise support and a turnkey solution at a significant cost savings, coupled with a good marketing campaign to tell parents that it's okay, that Johnny and Janie will be better off with OSS, schools will continue to be breeding grounds for the Microsoft plague.
Under Moore's Law, the price of computing power halves every 18 months. So that means in 5 years, the price ought to be about 1/(2^(5/1.5)) =~ a tenth of that.
That means in five years I'll be able to afford it on my desktop for about what I make an hour.
Woohoo!
I hope it comes with a better mouse. I have one of those mechanical ones, and it keeps getting granola in it.
There is a whole secondary industry devoted to buying and selling student loans. By law they're not allowed to raise your interest rate, which is generally about what you'd pay for a car loan. It's deferred until you're no longer in school (with loopholes for some teachers, volunteers, military, etc.).
The loan market works like other loan markets. An interesting feature of these loans, though, are that if you default they can go after your tax refund or even get a lien on your paycheck. (In the U.S., money is taken out of worker's paychecks to pre-pay income taxes, and if there is an overage you get money back. That refund makes people tolerate the system, since they think they're getting a gift from the government.) Also, the loans follow you through bankruptcy.
Some states don't participate in the secondary markets, and some only partially do (selling your loan if you move out of state, for example).
The big reason companies want to buy student loans is that they can sell you a consolidation loan, which doesn't have the same features as a regular student loan. The consolidation loans carry a lower nominal interest rate, which the fine print says will go up in six months or balloon to some outrageous figure like 29% if you skip a payment.
All of this blather about getting your site ranked by the search engines, adviews, and people setting up sites just to get ad revenue so companies can sell products to people who don't really want them is a sickness.
Companies are so interested in this week's figures that they forget to make good stuff that people want. It's way easier to listen to some parasuit telling you in 50 buzzwords or less that he can make you lots of money right now.
And it's easier to plagiarize, change the wording here and there, and get your page ranked high than it is to come up with something new. And people don't seem to want quality any more anyway, they want cheap, fast, and easy.
I think I'll drink that hemlock now.
Some of that is ok, and some of it I'd say is actually negative, but none of it strikes me as justification for demanding that all students have laptops. What is their real motivation for requiring laptops?
I think it's a lot of herd behavior. Everybody's going digital, so it must be good.
Or perhaps I'm a luddite and just don't know it.
That may be true, but not in the way you mean. The NSA is apparently scouring records to see who communicates with suspected terrorists. They aren't listening in to random conversations. There's no point to it. It would be a waste of manpower, utterly fruitless, and do nothing but make everybody mad, and rightly so.
Knowing this, people in the media keep using the words "wiretapping" and "spying", to conjure images of men in unmarked vans. It's nothing but political opportunism.
The whole point is to find out who to watch, to make it worthwhile to investigate further. They're just grepping logs.
The NYT won't be satisfied until there's another major attack. Then they can point fingers some more, saying how ineffective the President was. That will sell newspapers, and their obsolete medium will last a little longer. I'm not sure which one motivates them more.
If the Chinese create their own network, what does that mean? There are some real benefits to the rest of the world.
...).
.cn), but outside you do. So in China they'd refer to Slashdot as slashdot.org.us, but in the US we'd just call is slashdot.org. Similary, domains inside china would be [something unicode].[something else unicode], but we'd say [something unicode].[something else unicode].cn.
What it means is having a limited number of gateways between the Chinese Internet and the rest of the world. Either that number will be zero or more than one. Any data exchange will doubtless be monitored and filtered to permit or deny whatever content they want to get in or come out.
I seriously doubt the number of gateways will be zero. They may try to do it with just one, if some foolish bureaucrat decrees it. But if they have a gateway you can bet it will be because there is information they want exchanged, and it will quickly become apparent that more than one is necessary.
So effectively it's just a tighter means of access control. They want to be able to clamp down on all of these newfangled Western ideas, like voting and spaghetti (oh, wait
The way DNS ought to work anyway is that inside of a country you don't use the top-level domain (.us or
The whole thing is just like deciding to use NAT inside your home network, and setting up a DNS system for yourself. There's no technical reason why you couldn't have millions of computers all hidden behind an addresss translator. You only need enough real, external IP addresses to make the port mapping work. If that means IP addresses are freed up, maybe that's how all countries should do it, where it's practical.
I don't see it as "fracturing" the Internet, though.
The "blog", or something like it, will be here from now on.
People for the most part disconnected from their extended family and childhood friends. The Internet makes it possible either to stay connected with them or to find a new set of people with whom to connect, based not on heredity or geography but on common interests. Email and IM don't work for finding new people, only for data exchange with old ones.
Another feature of the blog is googlability. Say it once, and anyone searching for that thought can stumble into your take on it. That blows away legacy media, as radio and TV blew away whistlestops and soapboxes. Suddenly, it's not the financial power of your boss but the content of your message that's important.
The ramifications of that are just now being felt.
I'm as much an opponent of rigged elections as anybody. But in your zeal to see black and white, you missed the point.
It's not that alerting the citizenry that a voting machine is uncertified is bad, nor even that blowing the whistle is bad. This is not a simple case of retribution against a whistleblower.
It's stealing documents that's bad. Violating attorney-client privilege is bad. Why, you ask?
Even those accused of murder and child molestation have a right to a fair trial. In fact, the more heinous the crime the more important it is to conduct the trial fairly, so as not to punish the innocent. Funny how people who otherwise know that forget it when someone they don't like, whether it's OJ Simpson or Diebold, is the accused.
Leaking documents prejudices the case, one way or another, and risks having the case thrown out. Attorneys *must* be able to discuss in secret what their strategy is, or the legal system would fall apart. The discussions between two attorneys behind the scene are not facts, they are not evidence. They are merely commentary.
The trouble is that people (jurors) cannot help but form an opinion based on some leak. "Gee, if that's what they say in private, it must be true." Possibly, if the discussion is not taken out of context by some reporter with an axe to grind or newspapers to sell. It's also possible that the typist only chose those documents that looked the worst for Diebold.
I don't want the justice system to reward people who work to thwart it, even if it means letting a guilty man go free.
Flirt.
The point of the blog is hidden cleverly in the word "blog" itself. It's short for "web log", of course, but the "log" comes from the Greek logos: word, talk, knowledge. It's about the written word.
There are lots and lots of tools available for dealing with the content of a file of text, but semanticising and analyzing other media, such as audio and video is much more difficult, and perhaps impossible. The problems range from creation (making sure that the content is what the author really wants to express) all the way through search, bandwidth, and archival. What is important about a particular video clip or other cruft in some blog? But the practicalities are just one problem.
There appears to be a need in humans to communicate using words. With words we can entertain, inform, and convey precisely the meaning we wish to convey, given our skill level.
Perhaps there is room for multimedia blogs. Perhaps their presence won't ruin the experience of reading someone else's take on things and giving our own. Perhaps it won't devolve into mere entertainment. Maybe people would rather speak and see their way around an argument.
But I suspect that when people start using the old campfire for putting on their plays and bullfights, we'll search out some new one around which to argue the great events of the day. Like Usenet before it and the pamphleteer's press before that, we won't be able to stop ourselves.
If WinCE becomes dominant the way it has on the desktop, then yes, there will be viruses galore.
If Linux were to become dominant, the situation wouldn't be quite as bad (fewer viruses) but the ones that came out would hit harder since fewer phones would be protected against them. Same for Java or whatever other non-Windows thing.
If the market remains splintered in terms of OS, that would hinder viruses from spreading. Most high-profile markets tend to consolidate around one or two big players, and as cell phone technology matures that will probably happen there, too.
That's why I shudder when Cingular (?) advertises the "first Treo that runs Windows programs, just like your desktop". Give me the PalmOS model, please, so I can run apps meant for PDA screens, not a 19-inch monitor.
And if WinCE dominates, I won't have to worry about viruses on PalmOS.
Violence is sometimes necessary. If saving someone's life, such as your own, required violence would you refuse to engage in it? Whatever your answer, I don't want my kids to hesitate to use violence if some situation calls for it.
The key is instilling a value system. Your value system appears to include non-violence as an axiom, as one of its base tenets. Mine doesn't. Non-violence to me is less important than life, liberty, justice, honor, and courage, though it is more important than wealth, fame, or my own dignity. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
What a ludicrous comment. If it were illegal here, I wouldn't do it here, but it still wouldn't be immoral. Basing my behavior on what's legal or illegal in some other legal jurisdiction would mean I could do nothing except pay taxes, which all governments seem to allow. Basing my morality on what's legal or illegal is the essence of popularism, which, to make a long story short, I reject.
I couldn't have said it better myself -- before I had kids, that is. Sometimes, no matter how well you strategize, plan ahead, and train them, they'll rebel and demand a showdown. If you fail to use physical force at those times, you will lose their respect and have a brat to deal with. They'll think you don't care, either about them or what they do. It's weird, but I've seen it over and over again, in my own kids and others.
On the other hand, if you use physical force for mere punishment, it will lose its effectiveness and cause resentment, bitterness, and require escalation.
I think the key is consistency. If they know what to expect from you, they'll adjust to most anything.
It's behind. People don't congregate in the living room any more, around a coffee table. They live in the kitchen.
They should market it as a game room item. Trouble is, the touch-screen is going to get damaged so easily that nobody would want it in a game room. If I can't put my feet up on it or set a bowl of popcorn on it, I don't want it in the living room, either.
There's a company in Illinois that sells desks with glass tops, so you look down through the desk at the screen. Very comfortable to use. I'd think that a coffee table with a glass top like that might work better.
As long as I can put my feet up on it.
That should have said, "Using a diverse set of respondents is essential, so that your errors cancel."
I sort of had to chuckle when Mr. Enderle said programmers don't get taught statistics. I don't know about others, but I had to take three different stats courses, though I'd call only one of them truly rigorous -- the others were just business and social science courses, which focused primarily on survey design and analysis.
But let's take his points one-by-one. Well, wait. He's done the typical trick of repeating several points with different wording, using fancy pseudo-academic fluff words. I'll lump them together:
1. Population tested is unclear (IT organizations, generic respondents, CIOs and MIS Managers?)
2. Sampling method is inconsistent, largely self-selecting, and inherently biased (i.e., not blind)
3. Respondents are not of consistent level or responsibility
4. vastly different locations and business types
Using a diverse set of respondents is essential, ensuring "regression toward the mean". That's where your errors cancel if you set things up correctly. Typical MS-sponsored studies question a group of 30 or so people with the same kind of job at the same kind of company, which guarantees a sample bias. It's like asking a bunch of soccer moms whether kids get proper nutrution. They all have the same point of view.
And I'm not exactly sure how you'd do a "blind" sample for a study like this. Survey ten thousand companies and randomly select the ones you'll report on? Not tell the respondents what the questions are about? Pfah. Either I am missing something, or Mr. Enderle is not being forthright.
6. Results -- in terms of pricing -- are outside of survey scope
7. No test ensures that respondents consistently ran both Linux and Windows-
8. A large percentage of the statistical results were Linux only
9. Conclusions are not supported by the data. There is very little Windows data, sparse enterprise data, but a great deal of anecdotal commentary.
Guess what -- Windows pricing vs. Linux pricing is not difficult to analyze, and they aren't sold the same way. Also, Windows behavior is well-known to sysadmins, and the study was about Linux, after all.
As for number 9, he's stating his conclusion as a supporting point, another neat trick. He doesn't like the results, so if the data aren't invalid (which he claimed was the case anyway) then the something must have been wrong with the way the conclusion was reached.
Life was simpler when street crooks and S.P.E.C.T.R.E. were the bad guys, and our heroes always won.