How do you get users to read error messages? Simple. Put pictures of naked ladies on them. How do you think Michelangelo got the common folk to be interested in looking at "art"?
Added bonus: Easy to describe the errors. Like your "puppy error," but more fun. "Hello, tech support? Yeah, I've got the blond chick in the shower... Oh, okay, just check to make sure the network cable's plugged in, got it."
I've been following this story for a the past week, and by far the scariest story I've read so far is from the Philadelphia Daily News: Students seem largely unfazed by spying case. Among the students quoted:
"A lot of people think this is being blown out of proportion," said senior David Freedman, 18. "I believe the school when they say they only used it to find lost or stolen laptops. People realize this is not a real threat."
"It an invasion of privacy, but I'm sure we signed stuff in waivers [when we got the computers]," said Senior Bonnie McFarland, 17.
How the hell much have we failed our children when they can't even be outraged about this? Are they seriously so used to living their lives in public on myspace and facebook that they don't even realize the value of the privacy that the school district stole from them here?
TFA posits that the proliferation of forked implementations and proprietary extensions will create a vast jungle of mutually incompatible Android phones. The problem with this argument is that, as Apple's "There's an app for that" campaign shows, it is increasingly not the features of the hardware that are selling mobile phones as much as it is the app ecosystem surrounding the platform. I'm inclined to think that handset manufacturers are going to be constrained in the amount of forking and proprietary extending they're going to be able to do without risking breaking compatibility with the mainstream app development. If it gets to a point where, for example, a large number of apps in the market have notes from the developer that say "won't work with HTC's super-Dream because of its proprietary SenseUI system," HTC will have effectively cut itself off from the major factor driving adoption of its product. Standardization is the handset manufacturer's problem, not the users' or the developers'. Developers will naturally build their apps for the most popular implementations, and other manufacturers will have to make sure their implementations compatible with those if they expect to compete.
Beneficial to many consumers? Healthy competition? Maybe in the short run, but what about the pending Book Search settlement? If that gets approved in its current form, Google gets exclusive access to scan and digitize millions of orphan works. Even if the settlement eventually gets cut back somewhat, Google has an enormous head start in its catalog from the books it's scanned already. Is there any doubt that the eBook format it chooses to market this huge selection of digital books will easily crush all other competitors? TFA seems to suggest that Google is planning on selling these eBooks only in cooperation with publishers and not from its settlement spoils at the moment, but given the potential to leverage the settlement monopoly to monopolize the market for eBooks and eReaders, I would be pretty surprised if this announcement doesn't pique the interest of the Justice Department.
Why do we need to pull GPS into the picture? I have absolutely no idea.
Because there are different speed limits on different roads? They want to eliminate all speeding. Going 45 mph in a 25 mph residential zone where children are playing is probably more dangerous than going 85 on a 65 highway, yet it wouldn't be prevented if you simply set the speedometer to max out at 65. You need the GPS to figure out what road you're on and what the speed limit there is, so that the maximum can be changed accordingly.
Sounds like a one-way ticket to Guantanamo to me. Hell, half of Congress already thinks people use p2p to fund terrorists. A protocol that DOSes Our Noble Corporate Sponsors in their fight against piracy and terrorism? No thanks, not in this political climate.
No, sorry, it doesn't work that way. That's (one of) the key differences between copyrights and patents: in copyright law, parallel independent creation is fine. So long as you can show you thought of it yourself, it doesn't matter if it's identical to someone else's copyrighted work. Courts aren't stupid, though, and if your work just *happens* to be identical to another, they tend to be suspicious. However, where, as here, the copyright law firm can probably show that it wrote its new letters itself (relied upon form letters, never looked at the letters you filed, etc.) and there is evidence of a bad faith effort by you to freeze them out, I wouldn't count on winning any suit you brought.
Executive privilege is designed to protect matters of national security. Not political blunders or malfeasance.
That's not entirely correct: one of the primary purposes of executive privilege IS actually to protect political blunders, oddly enough. The idea is that the president requires unbiased, honest opinions from his advisers, and in a world where a single soundbite taken out of context can destroy an entire career, there needs to be a forum where presidential advisers can offer candid opinions without fear that it will be dragged up in an abusive discovery phase of a politically motivated lawsuit (Note: I do not think California is such a plaintiff: but there are many, many who are, and the privilege is aimed at them).
Say, for example, that somewhere within these documents someone is on record saying that we need to dramatically raise taxes on gasoline; that is important and valuable advice that the president needs to hear. But if that quote were stamped in bold red Couier typeface across an unflattering B&W photo of its author, she would likely be a pariah within her party and lose any prayer of running for public office in many districts. Knowing that the political equivalent of an ambulance chaser is prevented from going on a discovery fishing expedition for damaging remarks about her will, the argument goes, encourage her not to pull her punches or sugar coat her opinions, ensuring that the president gets the advice he needs.
Given this president's demonstrated lack of interest in hearing any advice, candid or otherwise, that he hasn't already decided he agrees with, he's an odd person to be making this argument. It is, however, not completely unreasonable.
I've been living in China for the past year, and have asked lots of people about this. The only people who care about the firewall are foreigners, because the firewall blocks foreign sites. The vast majority of Chinese don't care that they can't read bbc.co.uk. What they DO care about is the staggering number of domestic blogs and news sites that get shut down each month for being labled "obscene" or "seditious," and no amount of internet wizardry is going to let you access a site whose server has been confiscated and webmaster imprisoned. I suppose Google could step up to the plate and start caching all of these doubleplus ungood blogs before they get taken down, and then perhaps bypassing the firewall would be useful, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
What really pleases Microsoft?
on
Lenovo To Shun Linux
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This is actually quite telling. I'm living in Beijing at the moment. On a quick trip to one of the many electronics markets, I can find hundreds upon hundreds of Lenova PCs available for purchase--not one of them running a legitimate copy of Windows. Logically, one might think that the way for Lenova to buddy up to Microsoft and "affirm global cooperation" would be to crack down on piracy of MS software in their home market. Au contraire, it appears, what really pleases MS is not the purchase of Windows (they don't care if you steal it, so long as you use it) but rather the non-use of a competing product.
Also, where has anyone heard stopping slowly increases mileage?
I think "stopping slowly" means more "coasting for a while before slopping." The idea is that you don't jump directly from the gas to the brake. If you consider a 200 meter approach to a stoplight, and you maintain your speed right up until slamming on the brake at the last minute or 15 meters, you had your foot on the gas burning up fuel for longer than if you had coasted and slowed down gradually for 30 meters or so. [shrugs] I guess the idea is that those 15 meters of fuel-burning to get to an inevitible stop add up eventually.
Now imagine if Ubuntu had instead been a group of developers who decided to combine their efforts with the Debian group to improve Debian?
Working with the Debian people can involve more bureacracy and red tape than working with the federal government, and some developers can't stand that. The philosophy of "Choice is Good" when it comes to users having a choice of desktop environments, word processors, etc. is often made, but don't forget it applies to FOSS developers too. Don't like the way a project is organized? Work on something else. Don't like the direction it's taking? Fork it. Choice keeps devs happy.
Shot down? I don't think so. More like still up for debate. Unless I'm mistaken, status quo remains and this can continue to be repeatedly brought up until the issue finally does get ruled on by the court. Correct?
Correct. A ruling by a court is, at it's heart, just a ruling on a particular case, it's just that each ruling sets a precedent which will be considered by the court in any similar case in the future. The lower court's decision in the Verizon case still sets a precedent to some degree, but it carries less weight than a Supreme Court ruling would have. But even WITH a SC ruling, it is still possible that it's "still up for debate"--in another case, another court might ignore the precendent: The Supreme Court certainly ignored Plessy v. Ferguson's precedent for segregation when they ruled on Brown. THE JUDICIAL BRANCH DOES NOT MAKE LAWS... as much as some of its members would like to think they do. They just rule on how a particular case relates to the laws.
I've always found *nix to be a lot better at properly utilising its hardware than Windows.
In most cases you're right, but I think with Doom 3, Windows is going to have an advantage. The Linux GPU drivers just don't get the same kind of developer attention and optimization that their Windows counterparts get.
Argh! The test I as a Gentoo-user was most interested in, whether compiles are significantly faster w/ 64 bit, they didn't include. What a bummer. Does anyone out there have some anecdotal evidence (completely unscientific, I know) about this?
As illegal as it is, I would love to see a zombie virus spread that locks down peoples computers, cleans them and installs a firewall.
Somebody tried something like this after the blaster worm: welchia. It wound up shitting up our network with all it's traffic and being more of a nuisance than the problem it was trying to fix. Virii are NOT the solution to virii; two wrongs don't make a right.
well this is pretty amazing. last year it looked like we linux advocates were just going to be keeping up the tired mantra of "unix is dead, long live linux... any day now, unix is gonna die... any day now..." who'd have guessed we'd now be saying "netware is dead, long live linux"? and who'd have guessed we'd be right?
They will be marketed only for Windows PCs, but the external one should work on Macintosh computers with the proper third-party software.
correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't ide devices pretty platform independent? why wouldn't an ide device for win32 work in ppc? and, (what i actually care about) are they going to work in some sort of proprietary bs that will prevent me from using it in linux?
as best as i can tell from this article, this suit also has little to do with sco ip being in linux. rather, the chief complaint seems to be that DaimlerChrysler did not comply with sco's ultimatum that any of its UNIX customers need to certify that they are not using sco ip in linux. (remember this one? it's tough to keep track of all the bullshit coming out of lindon, but as i recall, the general consensus was that this document was pretty meaningless, as it essentially said to sco's customers, " 'promise us you're not using our ip in linux.' 'uh, is your ip in linux? 'yes, but we can't tell you where.' 'uh, how can we promise we're not using it if you won't tell us what it is?'") i doubt daimler's losing any sleep over this one.
What's more secure, secret flaws or no flaws at all? I don't see how MS has a leg to stand on. This bug has been there--presumably unnoticed--for literally years. Within a matter of days of the source code's being "released," it has been identified, and if the MS developers were anything like OSS developers (i.e. didn't have some ridiculous "200 day" fix policy) it would be fixed in a matter of a few more days. I can't see how this is anything other than a vindication of the OSS model.
why can't lucas do that? 'cause then he can't wait another year or two, then release the super-duper special edition and make you buy it again. and again. and again...
>>In other news, it was determined that Rob Flickenger's blog is the only internet content generated in Utah
umm... haven't you seen those ubiquitous red-"c"-on-globe icons on the main page? i'd say more internet content is generated in Utah than any other state in the union
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How do you get users to read error messages? Simple. Put pictures of naked ladies on them. How do you think Michelangelo got the common folk to be interested in looking at "art"? Added bonus: Easy to describe the errors. Like your "puppy error," but more fun. "Hello, tech support? Yeah, I've got the blond chick in the shower... Oh, okay, just check to make sure the network cable's plugged in, got it."
How the hell much have we failed our children when they can't even be outraged about this? Are they seriously so used to living their lives in public on myspace and facebook that they don't even realize the value of the privacy that the school district stole from them here?
TFA posits that the proliferation of forked implementations and proprietary extensions will create a vast jungle of mutually incompatible Android phones. The problem with this argument is that, as Apple's "There's an app for that" campaign shows, it is increasingly not the features of the hardware that are selling mobile phones as much as it is the app ecosystem surrounding the platform. I'm inclined to think that handset manufacturers are going to be constrained in the amount of forking and proprietary extending they're going to be able to do without risking breaking compatibility with the mainstream app development. If it gets to a point where, for example, a large number of apps in the market have notes from the developer that say "won't work with HTC's super-Dream because of its proprietary SenseUI system," HTC will have effectively cut itself off from the major factor driving adoption of its product. Standardization is the handset manufacturer's problem, not the users' or the developers'. Developers will naturally build their apps for the most popular implementations, and other manufacturers will have to make sure their implementations compatible with those if they expect to compete.
Seems to me we've already developed a fusion reactor capable of solving the problems you mention with Saudia Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia...
Beneficial to many consumers? Healthy competition? Maybe in the short run, but what about the pending Book Search settlement? If that gets approved in its current form, Google gets exclusive access to scan and digitize millions of orphan works. Even if the settlement eventually gets cut back somewhat, Google has an enormous head start in its catalog from the books it's scanned already. Is there any doubt that the eBook format it chooses to market this huge selection of digital books will easily crush all other competitors? TFA seems to suggest that Google is planning on selling these eBooks only in cooperation with publishers and not from its settlement spoils at the moment, but given the potential to leverage the settlement monopoly to monopolize the market for eBooks and eReaders, I would be pretty surprised if this announcement doesn't pique the interest of the Justice Department.
Why do we need to pull GPS into the picture? I have absolutely no idea.
Because there are different speed limits on different roads? They want to eliminate all speeding. Going 45 mph in a 25 mph residential zone where children are playing is probably more dangerous than going 85 on a 65 highway, yet it wouldn't be prevented if you simply set the speedometer to max out at 65. You need the GPS to figure out what road you're on and what the speed limit there is, so that the maximum can be changed accordingly.
Sounds like a one-way ticket to Guantanamo to me. Hell, half of Congress already thinks people use p2p to fund terrorists. A protocol that DOSes Our Noble Corporate Sponsors in their fight against piracy and terrorism? No thanks, not in this political climate.
No, sorry, it doesn't work that way. That's (one of) the key differences between copyrights and patents: in copyright law, parallel independent creation is fine. So long as you can show you thought of it yourself, it doesn't matter if it's identical to someone else's copyrighted work. Courts aren't stupid, though, and if your work just *happens* to be identical to another, they tend to be suspicious. However, where, as here, the copyright law firm can probably show that it wrote its new letters itself (relied upon form letters, never looked at the letters you filed, etc.) and there is evidence of a bad faith effort by you to freeze them out, I wouldn't count on winning any suit you brought.
Say, for example, that somewhere within these documents someone is on record saying that we need to dramatically raise taxes on gasoline; that is important and valuable advice that the president needs to hear. But if that quote were stamped in bold red Couier typeface across an unflattering B&W photo of its author, she would likely be a pariah within her party and lose any prayer of running for public office in many districts. Knowing that the political equivalent of an ambulance chaser is prevented from going on a discovery fishing expedition for damaging remarks about her will, the argument goes, encourage her not to pull her punches or sugar coat her opinions, ensuring that the president gets the advice he needs.
Given this president's demonstrated lack of interest in hearing any advice, candid or otherwise, that he hasn't already decided he agrees with, he's an odd person to be making this argument. It is, however, not completely unreasonable.
I've been living in China for the past year, and have asked lots of people about this. The only people who care about the firewall are foreigners, because the firewall blocks foreign sites. The vast majority of Chinese don't care that they can't read bbc.co.uk. What they DO care about is the staggering number of domestic blogs and news sites that get shut down each month for being labled "obscene" or "seditious," and no amount of internet wizardry is going to let you access a site whose server has been confiscated and webmaster imprisoned. I suppose Google could step up to the plate and start caching all of these doubleplus ungood blogs before they get taken down, and then perhaps bypassing the firewall would be useful, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
This is actually quite telling. I'm living in Beijing at the moment. On a quick trip to one of the many electronics markets, I can find hundreds upon hundreds of Lenova PCs available for purchase--not one of them running a legitimate copy of Windows. Logically, one might think that the way for Lenova to buddy up to Microsoft and "affirm global cooperation" would be to crack down on piracy of MS software in their home market. Au contraire, it appears, what really pleases MS is not the purchase of Windows (they don't care if you steal it, so long as you use it) but rather the non-use of a competing product.
I think "stopping slowly" means more "coasting for a while before slopping." The idea is that you don't jump directly from the gas to the brake. If you consider a 200 meter approach to a stoplight, and you maintain your speed right up until slamming on the brake at the last minute or 15 meters, you had your foot on the gas burning up fuel for longer than if you had coasted and slowed down gradually for 30 meters or so. [shrugs] I guess the idea is that those 15 meters of fuel-burning to get to an inevitible stop add up eventually.
Working with the Debian people can involve more bureacracy and red tape than working with the federal government, and some developers can't stand that. The philosophy of "Choice is Good" when it comes to users having a choice of desktop environments, word processors, etc. is often made, but don't forget it applies to FOSS developers too. Don't like the way a project is organized? Work on something else. Don't like the direction it's taking? Fork it. Choice keeps devs happy.
http://forums.gentoo.org/
Correct. A ruling by a court is, at it's heart, just a ruling on a particular case, it's just that each ruling sets a precedent which will be considered by the court in any similar case in the future. The lower court's decision in the Verizon case still sets a precedent to some degree, but it carries less weight than a Supreme Court ruling would have. But even WITH a SC ruling, it is still possible that it's "still up for debate"--in another case, another court might ignore the precendent: The Supreme Court certainly ignored Plessy v. Ferguson's precedent for segregation when they ruled on Brown. THE JUDICIAL BRANCH DOES NOT MAKE LAWS... as much as some of its members would like to think they do. They just rule on how a particular case relates to the laws.
In most cases you're right, but I think with Doom 3, Windows is going to have an advantage. The Linux GPU drivers just don't get the same kind of developer attention and optimization that their Windows counterparts get.
Argh! The test I as a Gentoo-user was most interested in, whether compiles are significantly faster w/ 64 bit, they didn't include. What a bummer. Does anyone out there have some anecdotal evidence (completely unscientific, I know) about this?
Somebody tried something like this after the blaster worm: welchia. It wound up shitting up our network with all it's traffic and being more of a nuisance than the problem it was trying to fix. Virii are NOT the solution to virii; two wrongs don't make a right.
well this is pretty amazing. last year it looked like we linux advocates were just going to be keeping up the tired mantra of "unix is dead, long live linux... any day now, unix is gonna die... any day now..." who'd have guessed we'd now be saying "netware is dead, long live linux"? and who'd have guessed we'd be right?
They will be marketed only for Windows PCs, but the external one should work on Macintosh computers with the proper third-party software. correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't ide devices pretty platform independent? why wouldn't an ide device for win32 work in ppc? and, (what i actually care about) are they going to work in some sort of proprietary bs that will prevent me from using it in linux?
as best as i can tell from this article, this suit also has little to do with sco ip being in linux. rather, the chief complaint seems to be that DaimlerChrysler did not comply with sco's ultimatum that any of its UNIX customers need to certify that they are not using sco ip in linux. (remember this one? it's tough to keep track of all the bullshit coming out of lindon, but as i recall, the general consensus was that this document was pretty meaningless, as it essentially said to sco's customers, " 'promise us you're not using our ip in linux.' 'uh, is your ip in linux? 'yes, but we can't tell you where.' 'uh, how can we promise we're not using it if you won't tell us what it is?'") i doubt daimler's losing any sleep over this one.
What's more secure, secret flaws or no flaws at all? I don't see how MS has a leg to stand on. This bug has been there--presumably unnoticed--for literally years. Within a matter of days of the source code's being "released," it has been identified, and if the MS developers were anything like OSS developers (i.e. didn't have some ridiculous "200 day" fix policy) it would be fixed in a matter of a few more days. I can't see how this is anything other than a vindication of the OSS model.
why can't lucas do that? 'cause then he can't wait another year or two, then release the super-duper special edition and make you buy it again. and again. and again...
>>In other news, it was determined that Rob Flickenger's blog is the only internet content generated in Utah umm... haven't you seen those ubiquitous red-"c"-on-globe icons on the main page? i'd say more internet content is generated in Utah than any other state in the union