Well... Oracle has been a big push for NetApp for a long time now. Big O's sales reps have claimed that Oracle uses NetApp exclusively internally for database systems. NetApp litigating against Oracle is definitely biting the hand that promotes you.
It's hard to say whether this bodes well for ZFS in the open environment.
Uh... I seem to remember a "Man from UNCLE" episode where Shatner was a citizen enlisted to trap a spy or something, and the spy he dealt with was... Leonard Nimoy.
Alas, poor Solaris! I knew it, McNealy, an o/s of infinite capability, of most excellent fancy. It hath bore my applications on its back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!
There is some differentiation here as to gluten reactions. Celiac as described in the lit is an auto-immune reaction which causes damage to the lining of the gut. There are some other indications that there is, for some people, a lack of ability for the gut to properly break down gluten before it enters the blood stream. Theory goes that the gut allows the gluten fragments to enter the bloodstream where they act like a toxin. Other proteins in this category are casein and soy.
People with gluten sensitivities just get glommed together as celiac even though there may different underlying causes.
Another confounding factor is gut ecology with some more theory and anecdotal support for yeast colonization causing a number of negative effects.
Unfortunately, there is not much incentive for drug-company funded research to get involved. No money in it. All these stories, theories, factors vectoring in on the gut and digestive processes as fundamental to some of the most puzzling and difficult to treat diseases and syndromes yet the research being done is limited. No obvious profit outcome if the treatment is not eating gluten or taking a daily dose of a cheap drug like nystatin.
A really tangled knot: hard to study either directly or indirectly, and there are a lot of individual factors (apparently).
Finally: at least anecdotally (and there are a LOT of stories supporting this), celiac/leaky gut seems to be a factor for a large number of people in the autistic spectrum (Asperger's, Tourette's, etc etc). So, if you have an autistic child, at least trial removel of gluten, casein and soy from the diet. Kicker is that even if a celiac test comes up negative, removal of gluten and the others from the diet may show a very positive effect.
Over cleanliness, over "fear of germs", soccer moms, etc, etc
let the kids play in dirt and eat stuff, no allergies
How this got modded to 3 for insightful is ridiculous. This is a very non-useful, over-simplification of research that has shown that there is a relationship between the household environment experienced in youth and the development of some immune system disorders. The relationship itself is not well understood and the statement that kids who "play in dirt" don't develop allergies is fatuous. Perhaps adding dirt to the diet is not the answer but removal of "Mr. Clean" and "Spin n' Span" etc from the environment is. Or, kids who play outside all day are not exposed as much to the vapours flashing off of OSB, paints, and carpets in new homes.
Even then, allergy issues have been around throughout the ages. In particular, celiac disease appears to have been reported as far back as the first century AD. It has probably been an issue since people started eating and cultivating grains.
No double standard, just your lack of understanding of what a "disease" is:
1. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms. 2. A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful.
Arsenic in the environment (such as in a water supply) would lead to a harmful, abnormal condition identifiable by a group of symptoms. So arsenic ingestion results in an arsenic disease. One of the differences would be that arsenic is a poison because it will kill almost everyone with a fairly tight range of exposure (er.. amount absorbed).
Wheat gluten adversely affects only a portion of the population so we don't call it a poison. We could say it is somewhat poisonous to celiacs because it does do organ damage to celiacs. And it causes celiac disease in that portion of the population.
Both arsenic and wheat gluten result in a disease condition for some people. Arsenic results in disease condition for all people (unless there is an arsenic immune person out there).
Your statement blaming the sufferer for the disease is troublesome at best.
I am upset about this because Verizon should not have any way to get into my router and change the settings, especially because I own the router, not them!
I'm upset they let people like you on the internet. Change your passwords from the default and use something secure. Instead of waiting for somebody to do something fun like log in remotely to your router using the default login and hosing your settings so your internet goes down.
This is a TR 69/TR 98 device and you can't disable ISP access. Well, not through any normal user level screen. You'd have to hack it.
Changing the default login will not make any difference.
Not taking sides here but for an explanation of what is going on, you might want to look at Motive's HDM (home device management) application which works with TR69 enabled devices. I am not a Verizon customer so I don't know what the service EULA looks like but if this was a Verizon supplied device then it is likely enabled for some home device management system and such management is OKd in the service agreement. Again, I am just making some assumptions here and not saying this is kosher.
TR69 devices register with a pre-determined server when they are powered on and go through an ISP determined process to do things like password setting. If you could sniff the line side, you should see an initial HTTPS session briefly set up, pass some traffic, and then shut down.
You might want to google TR-098 which is the Internet Gateway device specification within TR-069
Companies like Verizon and (I believe) British Telecom have gone this route to drive down help desk costs by enabling managed firmware upgrades and remote parameter setting of a subscribers device. ie Subscriber calls and complains "my internet is broken"; Tier I help desk remotely resets the subscriber's router to the original configuration and voila: the internet is unbroken!
HDM systems also gather metrics from the subscriber routers.
As far as the ISP is concerned, your FIOS/Cable/DSL router is the same as a TV set top box or satellite receiver. Cable and IP STBs are capable of sending back extremely detailed stats of anything that happens on the box, including your viewing habits.
From the ISP point of view, this gives them a powerful tool to deal with systemic failures due to firmware bugs, network attacks, and user finger problems. It also provides a method of getting network stats back from the field devices so that an overall picture of network health can be evaluated. Most subscribers will have no clue what is going on and mostly don't give a fig.
Safest approach is to assume that the access layer router is owned (in the control sense) by your provider and put your own security layer below it. Be warned that you likely can't put your IP TV STB behind your own security layer unless you make sure it can pass multicast.
Again, I am not saying this is hunky-dory but it is what I have seen.
Well done with the "I've been to Japan" name/location-dropping.
Someone (not an AC) counters with an intelligent argument and backs it up with actual locations / places that can be verified. The best you can do is a "neener neener" about name dropping?
I don't know why, apparently, Japanese web sites have their own particular look and feel that is overwhelming. Like others have pointed out here, this seems to be a superficial judgement that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Can't speak to Japanese culture but I used to work for a large Japanese industrial firm and their engineers would be over here once in a while. This was at the height of the VCR UI madness when you needed an MIT grad to navigate the number of controls and buttons on the device. I talked with one of their engineers (after a round of golf;> ).... I asked him why Japanese electronics were so complicated; he answered that the designs came from the engineers and they wanted to control everything controllable and that they were so used to it that it didn't seem complicated. This seems to be a common trait to technical people and not necessarily the Japanese.
Complex systems do not seem complicated to those who know in detail how the systems works. Instead of pointing at "Japanese" culture, we should point at a technical culture for complexity in design.
Complex design is still happening and you can't blame the Japanese for it. Just look at your cell phone: try to find a truly simple one. That is, a cell phone that has one interface screen with minimal buttons and no modal controls (buttons / control paths that change based on current context).
Don't hand me that "iPhone is simple and elegant" crap. I love my iPhone but it is extremely complex. In different ways from, say, a Blackberry or a laptop computer running Windows / Linux / flavour of your choice, but it is still complex. Try managing power consumption on it.
My wife is not a technophobe but she has extreme difficulty with a lot of what is widely accepted as "simple" on our PCs and devices. I don't think she is alone in her difficulties but she doesn't get much sympathy from a culture that is now steeped in added-functionality, multiple layer, hieracrchical, modal control paths.
Better quit now or I'll go off on how technical complexity has replaced social complexity.;-)
You don't have to make up artificial situations: just make sure you carry the right attitude and philosophy in all your dealings. Kids watch what you do and learn from it. They don't have to be force fed healthy behaviour; they need to live in a healthy atmosphere.
Look, I am not saying build a wall around your kids, but the concept that we should inure children to violence and gore and that we should just let them be exposed to anything on TV is just wrong and extremely off target. Also, the idea that "boys...seek out sources of pain" is just weird.
My son plays hockey and he has his share of testosterone. He doesn't shy away from rough situations but he certainly doesn't seek out pain or painful situations. Just the opposite.
Now, just because children from an early age can abstract and differentiate between fiction and reality does not mean we should allow them to be exposed to traumatic fictional situations. Especially not on a regular basis.
On the path from birth to adulthood, children take on more and more decision making responsibility including about what they watch and what they spend their time at. At age 12, kids are, generally, still in a pretty critical developmental situation. We don't need to start desensitizing them to violence and suffering at that age.
Behaviour modelling is important and kids do act out behaviour that they are exposed to. Why would this be surprising?
Children can learn life lessons and develop powerful coping abilities without being steeped in fictional violence.
Don't get me wrong: I don't believe that some ill-conceived legislation should tell us, as adults, what we can see or do, at least within the limits of the criminal code. I am not some holier-than-thou moralist. The point at which our children are allowed to make the choices that adults make is individual. Parents know their own children best.
(Disclaimers: I read books, and grew up in an city-sized 60s suburb that was entirely safe to let kids roam.)
Parents of the time thought it was safer than parents do these days. It may be that it was safe. It may still be safe to do now. Or it may be it was simply perceived as being safe.
There were pedophiles and druggies around... but there were less distractions and more supervision. 90% of the houses in our neighbourhood had a parent at home during the day. Fences were 3-4' high and you could see through them. Strangers in an area were easily spotted.
There was milk and bread delivery to most homes and it seemed like there was always someone on the back porch working a laundry line.
Virtually no one is home during the day in our present area.
Hmmm, I grew up in the 50s and we roamed the neighborhood in relative safety, but there were also lots of parents around. Two income families were not the norm. My wife or I would take our kids (now teens) to the playground and we would be the only parents in the area.
There have been a number of significant changes in the way people spend their time and how they interact in the last 50 years. Entertainment content has changed as well. It is simplistic (but fun!!) to blame one thing or another for obesity and violence.
So here's my 2c: Up to grade 5 or 6, turn off the TV and limit computer time. Go outside and play with your kids. Talk WITH them for a significant part of every day, even if you have something more important to do.
Especially limit exposure to shows/games that use a lot of sarcasm or display/infer violence. Your kid isn't going to be a serial killer because they play violent games but they do model what they see and if you want them to learn how to interact successfully with others then make sure they see / hear / live in way that is what you consider healthy.
So you are saying buying a cell phone is committing yourself to a corporation-centric religion and if you jail break a phone then you are morally corrupt and a sinner?
Others might view jail breaking as an act of libertarian virtue in a world gone mad with corporate control freaks.;->
The 3GS antennae are at the bottom on the inside. I have seen no particular issue with the metal strip but there is some shielding when you hold it. Also, the phone itself seems to affect the radiation/sensitivity pattern since placing the phone upside down increases reception by 3 to 5 db as indicated.
Note that this is an observable phenomenon in various ways with many/all cell phones/walkie talkies.
What is particularly bad with the 4 is a drop of 24 db, not 3 to 5.
Solution: this is the same as the gain on my Wilson booster. Just strap a 12 v battery to your back, were a metal hardhat with the mag mount antenna on it and compensate for the 4's faults with a cell phone booster!
Apple makes some excellent products but it is a commercial, public, for profit, enterprise; it is not a sacred icon.
What is new for Apple is that they are now one of the biggest players (if not the biggest) in a huge market place and their customers are not all Mac zealots or other customers who are encultured in and accepting of the Apple Way. The Apple Way includes: simple interfaces (er... I would call them functionally deficient and somewhat paternalistic/controlling/condescending), and mostly excellent hardware (except for the odd laptop that falls apart on you).
The Apple Way also comes with an arrogant attitude and flat out denial that anything could be less than excellent with anything that Apple produces. This is likely an inherited trait from the executive management team.
With a huge customer base that goes beyond the repeat Mac buyer group, Apple has to learn that the old way of dealing with problems just won't work for serious issues and the one thing that really does not fly is denial of an obvious, demonstratable, repeatable, and serious problem. Waving the PR flag and smirking that it is 'the signal strength meter that is not reading right/you're mistaken on your expectations' comes across like the proverbial lead fart.
Apple has to do something significant here and the longer that they drag the issue out, the more they will have to pay. They should just fess up and come out with a fix. eg: free bumpers to existing customers, new iPhone 4.1 in the works. Some kind of discount/rebate for the iPhone 4.
Apple has a lot of "goodwill" value in their brand name (billion$$$) and they are pissing it away with bad PR. Apple needs to look long and hard at how they want to be viewed in the market place. Supposedly they are a quality brand meaning people expect both innovation and high quality. Along with that, the customer should be treated with respect and not like they are moronic sheep. My apologies to sheep afficienados for my insensitive remark.
It's a shame too because other than the antenna issue, the 4 is an excellent phone.
Back in the days of DOS 2.0, the evil empire was big bad blue (IBM). Microsoft's ubiquity and power made it the target of user ire (mostly justifiable) and everybody forgot about targeting IBM.
Apple has become amazingly profitable and is a real product leader with market penetration like they have never had with Macs and Powerbooks. The wider customer base is not going to just accept what Apple provides without criticism. The criticism will get a wider audience as well and will be reported through more media outlets than only the narrowly focused Mac publications.
Apple better get used to being the new Microsoft.
Apple deserves the criticism it is receiving but I don't think their corporate culture understands it. Clearly there is a communication disconnect between Apple and it's customers. I am sure that internally there is little understanding of why anyone would want to criticise their products. To the user community, this comes across as arrogance and denial but I think it is just Apple corporately reflecting the attitude of its CEO.
The signal meter explanation is laughable. Yes the meter indication is bogus, but so what? If you hold the phone in a normal way and you can't connect in an area where many others can then it doesn't matter what the meter says. The most basic function of the phone is defective and should be fixed.
In all fairness, the iPhone is a terrific piece of technology... it's just that it has technical problems and limitations (some deliberate) but Apple does the three monkeys thing. (See/Hear/Speak no Evil).
The battery thing leads to some interesting issues. First off, I realized quickly that although the iPhone is very handy it sucks battery like my F250 351 Windsor sucks gas. You can see the fuel gauge move as you drive (or idle). Lovely truck but be prepared.
My truck has two fuel tanks so I figure the answer for the iphone is a "second tank" as well. I bought a slip on auxiliary battery... and that does work, but....
The slip on battery does two other things besides providing spare juice. It insulates the iPhone and prevents heat escaping leading to an overheated iPhone that won't charge (a good thing otherwise the temp would destroy the battery), and it shields the iphone antenna causing a significant signal strength loss.
BTW, this is again my fault because the overheating was due to my using the iphone and similarly, the signal loss was only noticable because I tried to make a call and a data connection in a fringe area. My fault. Sorry. BTW, pulling off the battery and holding the phone upside down allowed the call to go through.
I don't expect miracles but Apple would do a lot of users a good turn if they would put less into the presentation layer and more into solving critical engineering issues. Providing access to the battery and upping the capacity by 50% would go a long way to dealing with the power problems. Out of power? Change the battery! Simple, elegant, and a solution available to just about every other phone on the market.
Designing a better heat dissipation system would help as well.
And while we are at it, how about an SD memory slot so the music selection can be changed without downloading from iTunes. A 16 G restore is slow.
The heat thing may be hard to engineer but a replaceable battery? A memory card? That's so basic.
One of the first things I noticed on my 3GS was that the signal bars were wonky. Anyone with a 3GS in a fringe area knows the bars overstate signal strength tremendously and are essentially useless. -113 db on field test and its showing 4 or 5 bars. This speaks volumes about Apple's engineering, testing, and customer support processes.
I complained and was told that the field test app (*3001#12345#*) is not approved and reads wrong; the bars are correct and no one else has complained about this; its how I use the phone. Its my fault. Why don't I please go away?
I love my iPhone but I can't think of a company that pi**e* me off more than Apple.
I accepted the bogus readings because many phones have poor signal meters and it is what I have come to accept as the norm. I always thought that overstating signal strength was a deliberate ploy.
It does explain how Apple is calculating that I get 300 hrs of standby when all I can get are 36 (1.5 days). The phone's battery really isn't dead; it's how I hold it. It is a zen thing: the battery is and..... is not.
Slashdot Mirror
Well... Oracle has been a big push for NetApp for a long time now. Big O's sales reps have claimed that Oracle uses NetApp exclusively internally for database systems. NetApp litigating against Oracle is definitely biting the hand that promotes you.
It's hard to say whether this bodes well for ZFS in the open environment.
Uh... I seem to remember a "Man from UNCLE" episode where Shatner was a citizen enlisted to trap a spy or something, and the spy he dealt with was ... Leonard Nimoy.
http://www.manfromuncle.org/episodes.htm
Shades of TOS time travel episodes.
Alas, poor Solaris!
I knew it, McNealy, an o/s of infinite capability, of most excellent fancy.
It hath bore my applications on its back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is!
My gorge rises at it.
There is some differentiation here as to gluten reactions. Celiac as described in the lit is an auto-immune reaction which causes damage to the lining of the gut. There are some other indications that there is, for some people, a lack of ability for the gut to properly break down gluten before it enters the blood stream. Theory goes that the gut allows the gluten fragments to enter the bloodstream where they act like a toxin. Other proteins in this category are casein and soy.
People with gluten sensitivities just get glommed together as celiac even though there may different underlying causes.
Another confounding factor is gut ecology with some more theory and anecdotal support for yeast colonization causing a number of negative effects.
Unfortunately, there is not much incentive for drug-company funded research to get involved. No money in it. All these stories, theories, factors vectoring in on the gut and digestive processes as fundamental to some of the most puzzling and difficult to treat diseases and syndromes yet the research being done is limited. No obvious profit outcome if the treatment is not eating gluten or taking a daily dose of a cheap drug like nystatin.
A really tangled knot: hard to study either directly or indirectly, and there are a lot of individual factors (apparently).
Finally: at least anecdotally (and there are a LOT of stories supporting this), celiac/leaky gut seems to be a factor for a large number of people in the autistic spectrum (Asperger's, Tourette's, etc etc). So, if you have an autistic child, at least trial removel of gluten, casein and soy from the diet. Kicker is that even if a celiac test comes up negative, removal of gluten and the others from the diet may show a very positive effect.
The deal is simple
Over cleanliness, over "fear of germs", soccer moms, etc, etc
let the kids play in dirt and eat stuff, no allergies
How this got modded to 3 for insightful is ridiculous. This is a very non-useful, over-simplification of research that has shown that there is a relationship between the household environment experienced in youth and the development of some immune system disorders. The relationship itself is not well understood and the statement that kids who "play in dirt" don't develop allergies is fatuous. Perhaps adding dirt to the diet is not the answer but removal of "Mr. Clean" and "Spin n' Span" etc from the environment is. Or, kids who play outside all day are not exposed as much to the vapours flashing off of OSB, paints, and carpets in new homes.
Even then, allergy issues have been around throughout the ages. In particular, celiac disease appears to have been reported as far back as the first century AD. It has probably been an issue since people started eating and cultivating grains.
No double standard, just your lack of understanding of what a "disease" is:
1. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.
2. A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful.
Arsenic in the environment (such as in a water supply) would lead to a harmful, abnormal condition identifiable by a group of symptoms. So arsenic ingestion results in an arsenic disease. One of the differences would be that arsenic is a poison because it will kill almost everyone with a fairly tight range of exposure (er.. amount absorbed).
Wheat gluten adversely affects only a portion of the population so we don't call it a poison. We could say it is somewhat poisonous to celiacs because it does do organ damage to celiacs. And it causes celiac disease in that portion of the population.
Both arsenic and wheat gluten result in a disease condition for some people.
Arsenic results in disease condition for all people (unless there is an arsenic immune person out there).
Your statement blaming the sufferer for the disease is troublesome at best.
Bullshit! ........ Stay away from used HP scopes since the damn things never triggered right even when they were new.
Wow! I thought I was the only one left that knew HP scopes had sucky triggers.
ebay it is. Many fine scopes available for a song. So it isn't just 2" thick and its analog... old Tek scopes are things of beauty.
BTW, a scope and a debug loop in a uproc circuit make fault finding easy if you include a sync pulse on a port output bit.
Ahhh.. I remember the days when we used to fix things.
Sigh.
I am upset about this because Verizon should not have any way to get into my router and change the settings, especially because I own the router, not them!
I'm upset they let people like you on the internet. Change your passwords from the default and use something secure. Instead of waiting for somebody to do something fun like log in remotely to your router using the default login and hosing your settings so your internet goes down.
This is a TR 69/TR 98 device and you can't disable ISP access. Well, not through any normal user level screen. You'd have to hack it.
Changing the default login will not make any difference.
Not taking sides here but for an explanation of what is going on, you might want to look at Motive's HDM (home device management) application which works with TR69 enabled devices. I am not a Verizon customer so I don't know what the service EULA looks like but if this was a Verizon supplied device then it is likely enabled for some home device management system and such management is OKd in the service agreement. Again, I am just making some assumptions here and not saying this is kosher.
TR69 devices register with a pre-determined server when they are powered on and go through an ISP determined process to do things like password setting. If you could sniff the line side, you should see an initial HTTPS session briefly set up, pass some traffic, and then shut down.
You might want to google TR-098 which is the Internet Gateway device specification within TR-069
http://www.broadband-forum.org/technical/download/TR-098_Amendment-2.pdf
http://www.actiontec.com/products/datasheets/MI424WR%20Verizon%20FiOS%20Router%20Datasheet.pdf
Companies like Verizon and (I believe) British Telecom have gone this route to drive down help desk costs by enabling managed firmware upgrades and remote parameter setting of a subscribers device. ie Subscriber calls and complains "my internet is broken"; Tier I help desk remotely resets the subscriber's router to the original configuration and voila: the internet is unbroken!
HDM systems also gather metrics from the subscriber routers.
As far as the ISP is concerned, your FIOS/Cable/DSL router is the same as a TV set top box or satellite receiver. Cable and IP STBs are capable of sending back extremely detailed stats of anything that happens on the box, including your viewing habits.
From the ISP point of view, this gives them a powerful tool to deal with systemic failures due to firmware bugs, network attacks, and user finger problems. It also provides a method of getting network stats back from the field devices so that an overall picture of network health can be evaluated. Most subscribers will have no clue what is going on and mostly don't give a fig.
Safest approach is to assume that the access layer router is owned (in the control sense) by your provider and put your own security layer below it. Be warned that you likely can't put your IP TV STB behind your own security layer unless you make sure it can pass multicast.
Again, I am not saying this is hunky-dory but it is what I have seen.
Well done with the "I've been to Japan" name/location-dropping.
Someone (not an AC) counters with an intelligent argument and backs it up with actual locations / places that can be verified. The best you can do is a "neener neener" about name dropping?
I don't know why, apparently, Japanese web sites have their own particular look and feel that is overwhelming. Like others have pointed out here, this seems to be a superficial judgement that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Can't speak to Japanese culture but I used to work for a large Japanese industrial firm and their engineers would be over here once in a while. This was at the height of the VCR UI madness when you needed an MIT grad to navigate the number of controls and buttons on the device. I talked with one of their engineers (after a round of golf ;> ).... I asked him why Japanese electronics were so complicated; he answered that the designs came from the engineers and they wanted to control everything controllable and that they were so used to it that it didn't seem complicated. This seems to be a common trait to technical people and not necessarily the Japanese.
Complex systems do not seem complicated to those who know in detail how the systems works. Instead of pointing at "Japanese" culture, we should point at a technical culture for complexity in design.
Complex design is still happening and you can't blame the Japanese for it. Just look at your cell phone: try to find a truly simple one. That is, a cell phone that has one interface screen with minimal buttons and no modal controls (buttons / control paths that change based on current context).
Don't hand me that "iPhone is simple and elegant" crap. I love my iPhone but it is extremely complex. In different ways from, say, a Blackberry or a laptop computer running Windows / Linux / flavour of your choice, but it is still complex. Try managing power consumption on it.
My wife is not a technophobe but she has extreme difficulty with a lot of what is widely accepted as "simple" on our PCs and devices. I don't think she is alone in her difficulties but she doesn't get much sympathy from a culture that is now steeped in added-functionality, multiple layer, hieracrchical, modal control paths.
Better quit now or I'll go off on how technical complexity has replaced social complexity. ;-)
Not being interested enough to look at the source video, dare I ask what part of the animal is the drinking spout?
Spot on, Eugene. Absolutely right.
You don't have to make up artificial situations: just make sure you carry the right attitude and philosophy in all your dealings. Kids watch what you do and learn from it. They don't have to be force fed healthy behaviour; they need to live in a healthy atmosphere.
Cheers
[Grin] I knew someone would point that out...
Look, I am not saying build a wall around your kids, but the concept that we should inure children to violence and gore and that we should just let them be exposed to anything on TV is just wrong and extremely off target. Also, the idea that "boys...seek out sources of pain" is just weird.
My son plays hockey and he has his share of testosterone. He doesn't shy away from rough situations but he certainly doesn't seek out pain or painful situations. Just the opposite.
Now, just because children from an early age can abstract and differentiate between fiction and reality does not mean we should allow them to be exposed to traumatic fictional situations. Especially not on a regular basis.
On the path from birth to adulthood, children take on more and more decision making responsibility including about what they watch and what they spend their time at. At age 12, kids are, generally, still in a pretty critical developmental situation. We don't need to start desensitizing them to violence and suffering at that age.
Behaviour modelling is important and kids do act out behaviour that they are exposed to. Why would this be surprising?
Children can learn life lessons and develop powerful coping abilities without being steeped in fictional violence.
Don't get me wrong: I don't believe that some ill-conceived legislation should tell us, as adults, what we can see or do, at least within the limits of the criminal code. I am not some holier-than-thou moralist. The point at which our children are allowed to make the choices that adults make is individual. Parents know their own children best.
Sure, but they go together. Feed healthy and act healthy. Let the ozone sniffers (sci guys) figure out if the chicken or egg came first.
(Disclaimers: I read books, and grew up in an city-sized 60s suburb that was entirely safe to let kids roam.)
Parents of the time thought it was safer than parents do these days. It may be that it was safe. It may still be safe to do now. Or it may be it was simply perceived as being safe.
There were pedophiles and druggies around... but there were less distractions and more supervision. 90% of the houses in our neighbourhood had a parent at home during the day. Fences were 3-4' high and you could see through them. Strangers in an area were easily spotted.
There was milk and bread delivery to most homes and it seemed like there was always someone on the back porch working a laundry line.
Virtually no one is home during the day in our present area.
Hmmm, I grew up in the 50s and we roamed the neighborhood in relative safety, but there were also lots of parents around. Two income families were not the norm. My wife or I would take our kids (now teens) to the playground and we would be the only parents in the area.
There have been a number of significant changes in the way people spend their time and how they interact in the last 50 years. Entertainment content has changed as well. It is simplistic (but fun!!) to blame one thing or another for obesity and violence.
So here's my 2c: Up to grade 5 or 6, turn off the TV and limit computer time. Go outside and play with your kids. Talk WITH them for a significant part of every day, even if you have something more important to do.
Especially limit exposure to shows/games that use a lot of sarcasm or display/infer violence. Your kid isn't going to be a serial killer because they play violent games but they do model what they see and if you want them to learn how to interact successfully with others then make sure they see / hear / live in way that is what you consider healthy.
So you are saying buying a cell phone is committing yourself to a corporation-centric religion and if you jail break a phone then you are morally corrupt and a sinner?
Others might view jail breaking as an act of libertarian virtue in a world gone mad with corporate control freaks. ;->
The 3GS antennae are at the bottom on the inside. I have seen no particular issue with the metal strip but there is some shielding when you hold it. Also, the phone itself seems to affect the radiation/sensitivity pattern since placing the phone upside down increases reception by 3 to 5 db as indicated.
Note that this is an observable phenomenon in various ways with many/all cell phones/walkie talkies.
What is particularly bad with the 4 is a drop of 24 db, not 3 to 5.
Solution: this is the same as the gain on my Wilson booster. Just strap a 12 v battery to your back, were a metal hardhat with the mag mount antenna on it and compensate for the 4's faults with a cell phone booster!
Apple makes some excellent products but it is a commercial, public, for profit, enterprise; it is not a sacred icon.
What is new for Apple is that they are now one of the biggest players (if not the biggest) in a huge market place and their customers are not all Mac zealots or other customers who are encultured in and accepting of the Apple Way. The Apple Way includes: simple interfaces (er... I would call them functionally deficient and somewhat paternalistic/controlling/condescending), and mostly excellent hardware (except for the odd laptop that falls apart on you).
The Apple Way also comes with an arrogant attitude and flat out denial that anything could be less than excellent with anything that Apple produces. This is likely an inherited trait from the executive management team.
With a huge customer base that goes beyond the repeat Mac buyer group, Apple has to learn that the old way of dealing with problems just won't work for serious issues and the one thing that really does not fly is denial of an obvious, demonstratable, repeatable, and serious problem. Waving the PR flag and smirking that it is 'the signal strength meter that is not reading right/you're mistaken on your expectations' comes across like the proverbial lead fart.
Apple has to do something significant here and the longer that they drag the issue out, the more they will have to pay. They should just fess up and come out with a fix. eg: free bumpers to existing customers, new iPhone 4.1 in the works. Some kind of discount/rebate for the iPhone 4.
Apple has a lot of "goodwill" value in their brand name (billion$$$) and they are pissing it away with bad PR. Apple needs to look long and hard at how they want to be viewed in the market place. Supposedly they are a quality brand meaning people expect both innovation and high quality. Along with that, the customer should be treated with respect and not like they are moronic sheep. My apologies to sheep afficienados for my insensitive remark.
It's a shame too because other than the antenna issue, the 4 is an excellent phone.
Re: Apple / MicroSquash
Back in the days of DOS 2.0, the evil empire was big bad blue (IBM). Microsoft's ubiquity and power made it the target of user ire (mostly justifiable) and everybody forgot about targeting IBM.
Apple has become amazingly profitable and is a real product leader with market penetration like they have never had with Macs and Powerbooks. The wider customer base is not going to just accept what Apple provides without criticism. The criticism will get a wider audience as well and will be reported through more media outlets than only the narrowly focused Mac publications.
Apple better get used to being the new Microsoft.
Apple deserves the criticism it is receiving but I don't think their corporate culture understands it. Clearly there is a communication disconnect between Apple and it's customers. I am sure that internally there is little understanding of why anyone would want to criticise their products. To the user community, this comes across as arrogance and denial but I think it is just Apple corporately reflecting the attitude of its CEO.
The signal meter explanation is laughable. Yes the meter indication is bogus, but so what? If you hold the phone in a normal way and you can't connect in an area where many others can then it doesn't matter what the meter says. The most basic function of the phone is defective and should be fixed.
I get better stories from my teenage kids.
Righty right right, mate!
In all fairness, the iPhone is a terrific piece of technology... it's just that it has technical problems and limitations (some deliberate) but Apple does the three monkeys thing. (See/Hear/Speak no Evil).
The battery thing leads to some interesting issues. First off, I realized quickly that although the iPhone is very handy it sucks battery like my F250 351 Windsor sucks gas. You can see the fuel gauge move as you drive (or idle). Lovely truck but be prepared.
My truck has two fuel tanks so I figure the answer for the iphone is a "second tank" as well. I bought a slip on auxiliary battery... and that does work, but....
The slip on battery does two other things besides providing spare juice. It insulates the iPhone and prevents heat escaping leading to an overheated iPhone that won't charge (a good thing otherwise the temp would destroy the battery), and it shields the iphone antenna causing a significant signal strength loss.
BTW, this is again my fault because the overheating was due to my using the iphone and similarly, the signal loss was only noticable because I tried to make a call and a data connection in a fringe area. My fault. Sorry. BTW, pulling off the battery and holding the phone upside down allowed the call to go through.
I don't expect miracles but Apple would do a lot of users a good turn if they would put less into the presentation layer and more into solving critical engineering issues. Providing access to the battery and upping the capacity by 50% would go a long way to dealing with the power problems. Out of power? Change the battery! Simple, elegant, and a solution available to just about every other phone on the market.
Designing a better heat dissipation system would help as well.
And while we are at it, how about an SD memory slot so the music selection can be changed without downloading from iTunes. A 16 G restore is slow.
The heat thing may be hard to engineer but a replaceable battery? A memory card? That's so basic.
Cheers ;->
One of the first things I noticed on my 3GS was that the signal bars were wonky. Anyone with a 3GS in a fringe area knows the bars overstate signal strength tremendously and are essentially useless. -113 db on field test and its showing 4 or 5 bars. This speaks volumes about Apple's engineering, testing, and customer support processes.
I complained and was told that the field test app (*3001#12345#*) is not approved and reads wrong; the bars are correct and no one else has complained about this; its how I use the phone. Its my fault. Why don't I please go away?
I love my iPhone but I can't think of a company that pi**e* me off more than Apple.
I accepted the bogus readings because many phones have poor signal meters and it is what I have come to accept as the norm. I always thought that overstating signal strength was a deliberate ploy.
It does explain how Apple is calculating that I get 300 hrs of standby when all I can get are 36 (1.5 days). The phone's battery really isn't dead; it's how I hold it. It is a zen thing: the battery is and ..... is not.