Whenever I hear the usual rant about users having their password as a sticky note on their monitors, my instant reaction is "It's your fault, you goob!" I've worked lots of places where they've implemented a new "password security process" which requires you to switch your password regularly and which prevent you from using the same password for some ridiculous period of time and which disallow dictionary-based words/phrases.
Hello, McFly? Which is better: my having an easily-remembered but difficult-to-guess password that I never write down, or you forcing me to change my password frequently and then write it down because your policy makes me choose something obscure? My original password was fairly strong (a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numbers that are meaningful only to me) but when I'm forced to change to something new, it will be written down somewhere until it's committed to memory. Can you say "counterproductive"? How about "unintended consequences"?
Of course, I understand that a lot of these policies are based on out-dated recommendations and come down from on high. However, it would be nice if those making these "rules" to realize that most users have other things to do besides remembering a constantly changing set of passwords. Oh, BTW -- my new password is "theCIOsucks!":-)
It's not an either/or -- you can have both. There are girls who are both smart AND attractive out there, they're just harder to find. But they do exist, 'cause I married one:-)
where thinking about the longer-term consequences of your actions isn't just overlooked, it's actively ignored. If you mention "opportunity cost" to the average credit card user out there, you're going to get a look of ignorance that's almost bovine in its nescience.
Funny thing is, I used to be in pretty much that same frame of mind until I got married. I just never thought more than a couple of months ahead... probably mostly because I got in the habit of living paycheck-to-paycheck when I was in the Army (talk about low pay!) and while I was a college student, I was just living month-to-month on my GI Bill money. My wife (who is brilliant and a 4.0 math major) started pointing out all the things that we were doing that involved long-term tradeoffs and I was totally amazed at the amount of money we were spending on "unnecessaries." Working together, we were able to get ahead of the curve and eventually, we bought both our cars for cash and our house with a nice down payment. We haven't paid interest on a credit card in about five years, and the last time I was out of work, we had enough cash to tide us over. We still spend money on "fun" stuff, but we're always careful to think about the tradeoffs so that we're making informed decisions.
The moral of my story: if you're not a financial genius, marry someone who is:-)
Hot on the heels of telling us these things are shown by "News Corp., Tribune, and Disney," Captain Obvious wants us to know that they're paid for by "the country's biggest corporations." Whoa. No kidding, Sherlock. What next? Water Wet, film at 11:00?
The only people with money to produce this crap are big corporations. It's pretty unlikely that Joe's Pizza is going to be able to pay for an advertisement disguised as a hard-hitting news story on the benefits of eating pepperoni. It's equally unlikely that big business is going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on these things and then air them on Public Access Channel 9.
I swear that the stories here are getting more and more like tabloid articles written by four-year-olds after one too many servings of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. I suppose that with my high UID, I shouldn't be complaining about the decline and fall of slashdot, but it's hard to resist when stories like this are "news for nerds"
I think it's energy density that's preventing
on
Blu-ray Laser Gadget
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· Score: 1
weaponization of lasers on the "handheld" scale. The flying "anti-satellite" laser that the DOD has is packed in a commercial-airliner-sized jet, and a good portion of that space is taken up by energy storage. At this point, even vehicle-mounted lasers aren't really practical, even when you're talking about some wheeled vehicle large enough to crate around a generator. In any "man-portable" laser weapon, the difficulty isn't the laser itself, it's carrying around the power storage/generation unit.
It's possible that we'll eventually be able to have "laser pistols" but for now, you'd be foiled by the lack of a long enough extension cord.
To your average consumer, a PC (or Mac) is a package deal. When there's an OS problem, they don't think "I'll call Microsoft about my problem" they call HP or Dell. If you ask your great aunt Matilda what's wrong with her computer, chances are she won't differentiate between a software and hardware problem. Anyone who does "support" over the phone for non-technically-oriented family and friends can confirm this. When the printer doesn't work, half the problem is determining if it's a hardware (printer/ink/cable) problem, or a software (Windows/driver) problem.
If Apple made Mac OS "Open" then they have to support it, because that's what consumers expect. I agree that right now, software is a cost center for Apple. But I completely disagree that opening the kernel is guaranteed to reduce that cost, especially in light of the complications it would introduce into Apple's support and QA organisations.
or get a really long extension cord and put a WiMax card in your desktop.
But that still doesn't answer the main question, which is how usable is this as a mobile technology? If you're talking about sitting in Starbucks or at the bookstore and using your laptop, then why not use the (free?) WiFi there? Maybe if you're on the train, you might have your laptop and the need for highspeed (some of the trains here have WiFi), but how many people do you know (outside the/. crowd) who take their laptop with them everywhere? Better yet, what's the proportion of laptop owners who carry their laptop around everywhere as opposed to the percentage of phone/PDA users who do so?
It's not that this technology will never go anywhere, or that it's 100% useless. It just that the hype of "OMG pony videos on teh cell phone is the roxors!11!" is ridiculous. At this point, the interface available on those devices means that it's not ready for your average, impatient user.
People who blather on about "Downloading songs," "Surfing the Internet" and "Watching Video" on cellphones (or other similar sized devices) are either ignorant of the interface obstacles, or heavily invested in Wireless stock. It's not the lack of speed that prevents people from doing these activites on their PDA/Phone, because people on dial-up (yes, there are millions of folks in the US who are still in that world) do all of them on their PCs. The videos may just be clips, but folks are downloading them.
The real barrier to getting people to do this stuff on their phone is the interface. A 1.5" x 2" screen, a keyboard that's designed for quick entry of numbers rather than letters, and a limited number of "option" buttons just don't cut it. I have a Treo, and it has a QWERTY thumb-board, 3" screen, and ten or twelve non-keyboard buttons, and I still only use it to surf in "emergencies"--like when my wife wants to stop and ask for directions ("No honey, I'll just use google maps" <Whew! that was close >) Heck, the only reason I even use email is to get images from the camera to my work PC, where I don't have the Palm software installed. Trying to search for a song, or watch a video is right out, as brother Maynard might say.
Until the interface problems are solved, the up-take on these services will be limited to early adopters and situations where the "need" for some bit of information can overcome the pain of entering everything on a tiny and/or non-QWERTY keyboard. Does anyone see Joe Sixpack being willing to enter 777784446647777 3-33777337778 777666777733 to find a song? I don't think so.
Eventually, someone will come up with a way to resolve this problem. Perhaps a "projected" keyboard, or voice recogition (Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all) or some solution that no one has thought of yet. For the moment, I don't see this "4th Generation" content going anywhere.
Here's this scientist with a lot of credibility among the most technically minded of politicians, essentially saying "the free exchange of ideas is dangerous" -- I wonder who Sir Tim sees as the arbiter between what is "disinformation" and what is fact, and between what is dissent and "undemocratic forces." I, for one, do NOT welcome our new MiniTruth overlords.
No thanks, Mr Lee. I want my Internet free from ANY censorship. Good intentions be damned; I don't trust you any more the GWB.
but this is more like the beginning of the beginning of a "solution" to SIDS. If there are brain stem and chemical abnormailites that cause SIDS, perhaps eventually we could check for those things in new babies before sending them home. Since the abnormailities were found in autopsies though, I'm wondering how long it will be before these abnormailities can be detected through some non-invasive procedure. But once there's a way, we could figure out which babies were prone to this and provided targeted warnings to parents, that would help--even if there's no immmediate "theraputic" solution.
Our daughter is 6 months old now, and sleeps mostly on her back or side, but it was strange to worry about her sleeping on her stomach during the first few months of her life. In every situation where you're with healthcare workers as a prospective parent, everyone is always warning you about SIDS and how your baby should never sleep on her side. The midwife, the pediatrician, the LD nursese. New parents already have a lot to worry about, so it would be nice if SIDS warnings could be (more) targeted at the babies who are most likely to have a problem. Of course, if this turns out to be only one of many causes, we'll have to keep worrying about it.
Just because people use PayPal, that doesn't mean their service is good. I use the DMV, but I can tell you that aside from PayPal, it's my least favorite organization to interact with. I do so because here in California they are the only place to get a driver's license.
It's not that PayPal is so good that complaints are a "rounding error" amongst the millions and millions of satisfied customers, it's that there are basically no other viable options. PayPal has the eBay market locked (where most non credit card transactions occur) and other services are so limited in scope that they are essentially niche products. They have become synonymous with "on-line payments for eBay" (thus eBay's purchase) and it's unlikely you're going to get a random eBay buyer or seller to sign up for "Joe's ePayment" system.
I have been looking for an alternative since I closed my PayPal account after the SomethingAwful mess, and so far I haven't found anything. It's true that a lot of PayPal sucks sites are pushing other options, but if you look at those options, you'll see that currently there's nothing with the market penetration of PayPal. Basically, PayPal is the Microsoft of electronic payments. There are other options, but they are the default, especially on eBay.
I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but neither is the plural of "it never happened to me" "it never happens"
I'm a former teacher myself, and I agree that a computer (and Internet access) can provide a lot of assistance with content, lesson plans, etc. I think the GP point isn't that teachers don't need a PC, but that putting a PC in the hands of each and every child is not, as yet, a proven boost to learning. In fact, I found that even just five PCs in my classroom made things more complicated, rather than less. I was an early proponent of computers in the classroom (before I was actually teaching) and I was the first teacher in my school to have a set of computers in my classroom. As usual, practice turned out to be different than theory, and the computers didn't wind up being the wildly successful educational tool that I thought they would be. The laptop on my desk (my personal laptop) was a positive tool, but introducing those additional PCs to the room was a mixed bag.
I, too, question the benefit of putting a computer on every desk in a "normal" classroom setting. However, I think that in situations where children are in a mixed environment (one-room schoolhouse) or where children can't get to school regularly, there could be a benefit.
If you're using the service to buy and sell on eBay, and everything else in the transaction goes smoothly, then PayPal workd fine. However, if you have a problem (with a buyer or seller) and you try and take it up with PayPal, you're going to get screwed. Let me explain how it works:
If you are a seller, and you ship and you "collect" money from PayPal and ship the item you sold, if the seller complains to PayPal (they can claim they didn't get the item, that it wasn't as advertised, etc.) PayPal will take the money out of your account because the transaction was "fraudulent" -- your loss: one item (which you shipped) since you won't be seeing the money. If you are a buyer, it works the other way around. If you pay for something and it never arrives, PayPal will refuse to refund the money.
As far as I can tell, in instances where there is a dispute, PayPal collects the money for themselves and the buyer and seller are out of luck. Some of this seems to be based on "who complains first" but generally if you use PayPal and have a problem, you can kiss your money goodbye. Add to this the fact that PayPal constantly pushes linking your PayPal account to your "real" bank account (apparently so they can clean you out in one fell swoop) and you have a recipe for... well, I'd say about 5 lbs of ammonium nitrate, some black powder, and a time-delay fuse.
First, put more effort into explaining the threat to Joe Sixpack and Jane Champagne. Banks have already started to do this themselves but it would be nice to see more "public service"-type announcements. Right now there are just too many people who don't understand the dangers, which makes it possible for Internet scams to succeed at a fairly high rate. Your average user apparently doesn't understand even the basics of how this stuff happens, so we need to work to explain how the Internets get through the series of pipes that contains them.
And sure, go after phishers legally. Hunt 'em down and send them off to prison with a hefty fine that confiscates all their ill-gotten gains. Publicize these prosecutions and make sure that the word gets out that law enforcement is actively working to catch these guys. Currently, phishing is a low-risk, high profit undertaking. Change the risk to benefit ratio and you'll make (some) progress. Banks have deep pockets, so I'd expect to see them start doing this type of investigation, similar to how the insurance industry does fraud investigations in cooperation with the police.
The economic side is to charge more for domains and eliminate the "grace period" when you can get a full refund of the registration fee. Right now, with domains costing $10, you've got phishers, domain "tasting", and a lot of other unsavory stuff going on. This is especially true since registrars allow you to change your mind after a couple of days. If you upped the price and made the grace period 6 hours, it would be less cost-effective to have "bankofamericana" for a day or two. It would also cut down on the ad farms, since (again) it's less cost effective to use an expensive domain for that.
about ride quality, ergonomics, or the ability to pass.
Hello McFly? Ever compared the wind noise inside a well-designed car with the hurricane-level buffeting of a poorly-deisgned one? Ever driven an underpowered car and had a hard time getting out of the way of a dangerous situation, or difficulty merging because you can't get up to speed on a short on-ramp? Ever come up on something unexpected in the road and had to swerve around it and been unsure if the suspension would handle the swerve at speed? Ever had someone unfamiliar with your car drive it and seen them unable to figure out how to work the headlights/wipers? Ever ridden in an under-sprung car and had it bottom out dangerously when you hit a big pothole?
We're not talking about whether they tell you about the ability to drive the car like a Formula One racer, they don't provide even the rudimentary information you need to make an informed car buying decision. If you're concerned about just the ability to reach freeway speeds in a reasonable amount of time, you'll have to look elsewhere. It's not car reviews for consumers as opposed to enthusiasts, it's car reviews for complete idiots. Just like their computer reviews: single-faceted, shallow, and free of essential content. But they'll tell you the location, size, and quality of each and every cupholder in that new SUV.
Sorry if this makes you feel bad about your over-priced subscription to CR's rag, but that's just the way it is.
It seems that to get the top rating in Consumer Reports, all that's required of a car are cushy seats (apparently every reviewer at CS weighs ~300 lbs) and a plethora of cupholders. I kid you not, most CS car reviews that I've read have like one sentence on the ride quality/handling, one sentence about engine power, and the four paragraphs that lovingly describe in enhaustive detail the number and location of cupholders and how easy it is to adjust the color of the radio backlight. Ugh.
If you think that someone is posting "internal" goals on the Internet without at least the tacit approval of the company, you're drinking Google's cool-aid. On top of that, you don't get as much bang for your buck if you announce in 2006 "We're going to strive for carbon neutrality sometime in the next couple of years" as you do announcing in 2007 "This year, Google met an 'internal' goal of becoming carbon neural."
I'm not saying that there isn't some portion of this that's genuinely driven by the desire to be a "good corporate citizen." Certainly it is possible, especailly for a company, to have multiple motives in pursuing this sort of goal. I'd even go so far as to suggest it's more likely that this sort of thing is done for many reasons instead of merely one.
As mentioned before, they have a good product. But their provision of an adequate search tool (for profit) hasn't completely eliminated my interest in rationally assessing their motives.
I like the KJV in part because the language is so rich. It's like reading Shakespeare or Milton -- you're not necessarily reading it for the content (that's what the newspaper, or a modern translation is for). It's like the difference between a modern song and a hymn. There's nothing _wrong_ with modern songs, but there's something special in the way that the words in old hymns are put together.
On my Palm I have BibleReader+ which offers a split-window view of two versions (top and bottom) which I really like. When I'm reading the KJV and come to someplace where the rendering is convoluted, I just look at the NEV and see how it would be put by someone using today's simpler syntax. My wife has a parallel New Testament with four (I think) translations in it, which is also nice.
Of course, I'm one of those odd people who read old stuff (Chaucer, Spenser, etc.) for fun:-)
And the proof is in the Slashdot pudding, where posters who are generally skeptical of businesses are all rushing to be the first to gush Google's praises and everyone's all aquiver over how "really responsible" Google is and what what a "role model" they are. Sheesh. When Exxon buys an ad saying how they are all about "saving the wild geese" or whatever, we all know the real deal: Exxon undertakes these projects as a PR exercise. Google is no different.
I like Google's search product (though they seem to be having a harder time defeating illegitimate SEO techniques) but let's be realistic here: they're in business to make money. If green power was a 100% losing proposition, they wouldn't be pursuing it.
A relation of mine has said "If I buy a Ford and it's crap, and I buy another Ford and it's crap, and I buy another Ford and it's crap, and then I say 'Ford vehicles are crap' that's rational. Why is it racist if I generalize about my experiences with <racial group x>?" (Of course, it's expressed a little more crudely than that)
Aside from the fact that people are not cars (and everyone has a different nature/nurture background, so no two people are alike) it's hard to find a counter argument. Not that he would be open to a counter argument, of course. The ideas that things can be put into groups and that we can base expectations on our experience are rational. Just not in this case. But saying "it doesn't work like that" isn't enough to counter that pattern-matching behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever I hear the usual rant about users having their password as a sticky note on their monitors, my instant reaction is "It's your fault, you goob!" I've worked lots of places where they've implemented a new "password security process" which requires you to switch your password regularly and which prevent you from using the same password for some ridiculous period of time and which disallow dictionary-based words/phrases.
:-)
Hello, McFly? Which is better: my having an easily-remembered but difficult-to-guess password that I never write down, or you forcing me to change my password frequently and then write it down because your policy makes me choose something obscure? My original password was fairly strong (a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numbers that are meaningful only to me) but when I'm forced to change to something new, it will be written down somewhere until it's committed to memory. Can you say "counterproductive"? How about "unintended consequences"?
Of course, I understand that a lot of these policies are based on out-dated recommendations and come down from on high. However, it would be nice if those making these "rules" to realize that most users have other things to do besides remembering a constantly changing set of passwords. Oh, BTW -- my new password is "theCIOsucks!"
It's not an either/or -- you can have both. There are girls who are both smart AND attractive out there, they're just harder to find. But they do exist, 'cause I married one :-)
where thinking about the longer-term consequences of your actions isn't just overlooked, it's actively ignored. If you mention "opportunity cost" to the average credit card user out there, you're going to get a look of ignorance that's almost bovine in its nescience.
:-)
Funny thing is, I used to be in pretty much that same frame of mind until I got married. I just never thought more than a couple of months ahead... probably mostly because I got in the habit of living paycheck-to-paycheck when I was in the Army (talk about low pay!) and while I was a college student, I was just living month-to-month on my GI Bill money. My wife (who is brilliant and a 4.0 math major) started pointing out all the things that we were doing that involved long-term tradeoffs and I was totally amazed at the amount of money we were spending on "unnecessaries." Working together, we were able to get ahead of the curve and eventually, we bought both our cars for cash and our house with a nice down payment. We haven't paid interest on a credit card in about five years, and the last time I was out of work, we had enough cash to tide us over. We still spend money on "fun" stuff, but we're always careful to think about the tradeoffs so that we're making informed decisions.
The moral of my story: if you're not a financial genius, marry someone who is
Like, the 678s, that's gonna be the section on Web 3.0 technology, right?
all your labrynths are in power-saving minitors!
Work that anti-business /. meme for fun and karma!
Hot on the heels of telling us these things are shown by "News Corp., Tribune, and Disney," Captain Obvious wants us to know that they're paid for by "the country's biggest corporations." Whoa. No kidding, Sherlock. What next? Water Wet, film at 11:00?
The only people with money to produce this crap are big corporations. It's pretty unlikely that Joe's Pizza is going to be able to pay for an advertisement disguised as a hard-hitting news story on the benefits of eating pepperoni. It's equally unlikely that big business is going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on these things and then air them on Public Access Channel 9.
I swear that the stories here are getting more and more like tabloid articles written by four-year-olds after one too many servings of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. I suppose that with my high UID, I shouldn't be complaining about the decline and fall of slashdot, but it's hard to resist when stories like this are "news for nerds"
weaponization of lasers on the "handheld" scale. The flying "anti-satellite" laser that the DOD has is packed in a commercial-airliner-sized jet, and a good portion of that space is taken up by energy storage. At this point, even vehicle-mounted lasers aren't really practical, even when you're talking about some wheeled vehicle large enough to crate around a generator. In any "man-portable" laser weapon, the difficulty isn't the laser itself, it's carrying around the power storage/generation unit.
It's possible that we'll eventually be able to have "laser pistols" but for now, you'd be foiled by the lack of a long enough extension cord.
To your average consumer, a PC (or Mac) is a package deal. When there's an OS problem, they don't think "I'll call Microsoft about my problem" they call HP or Dell. If you ask your great aunt Matilda what's wrong with her computer, chances are she won't differentiate between a software and hardware problem. Anyone who does "support" over the phone for non-technically-oriented family and friends can confirm this. When the printer doesn't work, half the problem is determining if it's a hardware (printer/ink/cable) problem, or a software (Windows/driver) problem.
If Apple made Mac OS "Open" then they have to support it, because that's what consumers expect. I agree that right now, software is a cost center for Apple. But I completely disagree that opening the kernel is guaranteed to reduce that cost, especially in light of the complications it would introduce into Apple's support and QA organisations.
would like us to call it GNU/Vista :-)
and zeroes are wrong. Wait... or was that ones are wrong and zeroes are right?
or get a really long extension cord and put a WiMax card in your desktop.
/. crowd) who take their laptop with them everywhere? Better yet, what's the proportion of laptop owners who carry their laptop around everywhere as opposed to the percentage of phone/PDA users who do so?
But that still doesn't answer the main question, which is how usable is this as a mobile technology? If you're talking about sitting in Starbucks or at the bookstore and using your laptop, then why not use the (free?) WiFi there? Maybe if you're on the train, you might have your laptop and the need for highspeed (some of the trains here have WiFi), but how many people do you know (outside the
It's not that this technology will never go anywhere, or that it's 100% useless. It just that the hype of "OMG pony videos on teh cell phone is the roxors!11!" is ridiculous. At this point, the interface available on those devices means that it's not ready for your average, impatient user.
People who blather on about "Downloading songs," "Surfing the Internet" and "Watching Video" on cellphones (or other similar sized devices) are either ignorant of the interface obstacles, or heavily invested in Wireless stock. It's not the lack of speed that prevents people from doing these activites on their PDA/Phone, because people on dial-up (yes, there are millions of folks in the US who are still in that world) do all of them on their PCs. The videos may just be clips, but folks are downloading them.
The real barrier to getting people to do this stuff on their phone is the interface. A 1.5" x 2" screen, a keyboard that's designed for quick entry of numbers rather than letters, and a limited number of "option" buttons just don't cut it. I have a Treo, and it has a QWERTY thumb-board, 3" screen, and ten or twelve non-keyboard buttons, and I still only use it to surf in "emergencies"--like when my wife wants to stop and ask for directions ("No honey, I'll just use google maps" <Whew! that was close >) Heck, the only reason I even use email is to get images from the camera to my work PC, where I don't have the Palm software installed. Trying to search for a song, or watch a video is right out, as brother Maynard might say.
Until the interface problems are solved, the up-take on these services will be limited to early adopters and situations where the "need" for some bit of information can overcome the pain of entering everything on a tiny and/or non-QWERTY keyboard. Does anyone see Joe Sixpack being willing to enter 777784446647777 3-33777337778 777666777733 to find a song? I don't think so.
Eventually, someone will come up with a way to resolve this problem. Perhaps a "projected" keyboard, or voice recogition (Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all) or some solution that no one has thought of yet. For the moment, I don't see this "4th Generation" content going anywhere.
Here's this scientist with a lot of credibility among the most technically minded of politicians, essentially saying "the free exchange of ideas is dangerous" -- I wonder who Sir Tim sees as the arbiter between what is "disinformation" and what is fact, and between what is dissent and "undemocratic forces." I, for one, do NOT welcome our new MiniTruth overlords.
No thanks, Mr Lee. I want my Internet free from ANY censorship. Good intentions be damned; I don't trust you any more the GWB.
but this is more like the beginning of the beginning of a "solution" to SIDS. If there are brain stem and chemical abnormailites that cause SIDS, perhaps eventually we could check for those things in new babies before sending them home. Since the abnormailities were found in autopsies though, I'm wondering how long it will be before these abnormailities can be detected through some non-invasive procedure. But once there's a way, we could figure out which babies were prone to this and provided targeted warnings to parents, that would help--even if there's no immmediate "theraputic" solution.
Our daughter is 6 months old now, and sleeps mostly on her back or side, but it was strange to worry about her sleeping on her stomach during the first few months of her life. In every situation where you're with healthcare workers as a prospective parent, everyone is always warning you about SIDS and how your baby should never sleep on her side. The midwife, the pediatrician, the LD nursese. New parents already have a lot to worry about, so it would be nice if SIDS warnings could be (more) targeted at the babies who are most likely to have a problem. Of course, if this turns out to be only one of many causes, we'll have to keep worrying about it.
Just because people use PayPal, that doesn't mean their service is good. I use the DMV, but I can tell you that aside from PayPal, it's my least favorite organization to interact with. I do so because here in California they are the only place to get a driver's license.
It's not that PayPal is so good that complaints are a "rounding error" amongst the millions and millions of satisfied customers, it's that there are basically no other viable options. PayPal has the eBay market locked (where most non credit card transactions occur) and other services are so limited in scope that they are essentially niche products. They have become synonymous with "on-line payments for eBay" (thus eBay's purchase) and it's unlikely you're going to get a random eBay buyer or seller to sign up for "Joe's ePayment" system.
I have been looking for an alternative since I closed my PayPal account after the SomethingAwful mess, and so far I haven't found anything. It's true that a lot of PayPal sucks sites are pushing other options, but if you look at those options, you'll see that currently there's nothing with the market penetration of PayPal. Basically, PayPal is the Microsoft of electronic payments. There are other options, but they are the default, especially on eBay.
I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but neither is the plural of "it never happened to me" "it never happens"
I'm a former teacher myself, and I agree that a computer (and Internet access) can provide a lot of assistance with content, lesson plans, etc. I think the GP point isn't that teachers don't need a PC, but that putting a PC in the hands of each and every child is not, as yet, a proven boost to learning. In fact, I found that even just five PCs in my classroom made things more complicated, rather than less. I was an early proponent of computers in the classroom (before I was actually teaching) and I was the first teacher in my school to have a set of computers in my classroom. As usual, practice turned out to be different than theory, and the computers didn't wind up being the wildly successful educational tool that I thought they would be. The laptop on my desk (my personal laptop) was a positive tool, but introducing those additional PCs to the room was a mixed bag.
I, too, question the benefit of putting a computer on every desk in a "normal" classroom setting. However, I think that in situations where children are in a mixed environment (one-room schoolhouse) or where children can't get to school regularly, there could be a benefit.
and not in a good way.
If you're using the service to buy and sell on eBay, and everything else in the transaction goes smoothly, then PayPal workd fine. However, if you have a problem (with a buyer or seller) and you try and take it up with PayPal, you're going to get screwed. Let me explain how it works:
If you are a seller, and you ship and you "collect" money from PayPal and ship the item you sold, if the seller complains to PayPal (they can claim they didn't get the item, that it wasn't as advertised, etc.) PayPal will take the money out of your account because the transaction was "fraudulent" -- your loss: one item (which you shipped) since you won't be seeing the money. If you are a buyer, it works the other way around. If you pay for something and it never arrives, PayPal will refuse to refund the money.
As far as I can tell, in instances where there is a dispute, PayPal collects the money for themselves and the buyer and seller are out of luck. Some of this seems to be based on "who complains first" but generally if you use PayPal and have a problem, you can kiss your money goodbye. Add to this the fact that PayPal constantly pushes linking your PayPal account to your "real" bank account (apparently so they can clean you out in one fell swoop) and you have a recipe for... well, I'd say about 5 lbs of ammonium nitrate, some black powder, and a time-delay fuse.
First, put more effort into explaining the threat to Joe Sixpack and Jane Champagne. Banks have already started to do this themselves but it would be nice to see more "public service"-type announcements. Right now there are just too many people who don't understand the dangers, which makes it possible for Internet scams to succeed at a fairly high rate. Your average user apparently doesn't understand even the basics of how this stuff happens, so we need to work to explain how the Internets get through the series of pipes that contains them.
And sure, go after phishers legally. Hunt 'em down and send them off to prison with a hefty fine that confiscates all their ill-gotten gains. Publicize these prosecutions and make sure that the word gets out that law enforcement is actively working to catch these guys. Currently, phishing is a low-risk, high profit undertaking. Change the risk to benefit ratio and you'll make (some) progress. Banks have deep pockets, so I'd expect to see them start doing this type of investigation, similar to how the insurance industry does fraud investigations in cooperation with the police.
The economic side is to charge more for domains and eliminate the "grace period" when you can get a full refund of the registration fee. Right now, with domains costing $10, you've got phishers, domain "tasting", and a lot of other unsavory stuff going on. This is especially true since registrars allow you to change your mind after a couple of days. If you upped the price and made the grace period 6 hours, it would be less cost-effective to have "bankofamericana" for a day or two. It would also cut down on the ad farms, since (again) it's less cost effective to use an expensive domain for that.
about ride quality, ergonomics, or the ability to pass.
Hello McFly? Ever compared the wind noise inside a well-designed car with the hurricane-level buffeting of a poorly-deisgned one? Ever driven an underpowered car and had a hard time getting out of the way of a dangerous situation, or difficulty merging because you can't get up to speed on a short on-ramp? Ever come up on something unexpected in the road and had to swerve around it and been unsure if the suspension would handle the swerve at speed? Ever had someone unfamiliar with your car drive it and seen them unable to figure out how to work the headlights/wipers? Ever ridden in an under-sprung car and had it bottom out dangerously when you hit a big pothole?
We're not talking about whether they tell you about the ability to drive the car like a Formula One racer, they don't provide even the rudimentary information you need to make an informed car buying decision. If you're concerned about just the ability to reach freeway speeds in a reasonable amount of time, you'll have to look elsewhere. It's not car reviews for consumers as opposed to enthusiasts, it's car reviews for complete idiots. Just like their computer reviews: single-faceted, shallow, and free of essential content. But they'll tell you the location, size, and quality of each and every cupholder in that new SUV.
Sorry if this makes you feel bad about your over-priced subscription to CR's rag, but that's just the way it is.
It seems that to get the top rating in Consumer Reports, all that's required of a car are cushy seats (apparently every reviewer at CS weighs ~300 lbs) and a plethora of cupholders. I kid you not, most CS car reviews that I've read have like one sentence on the ride quality/handling, one sentence about engine power, and the four paragraphs that lovingly describe in enhaustive detail the number and location of cupholders and how easy it is to adjust the color of the radio backlight. Ugh.
That, sir, is either a hilarous typo or an amazingly funny/subtle poke at SonyBMG
Yet. Officially.
If you think that someone is posting "internal" goals on the Internet without at least the tacit approval of the company, you're drinking Google's cool-aid. On top of that, you don't get as much bang for your buck if you announce in 2006 "We're going to strive for carbon neutrality sometime in the next couple of years" as you do announcing in 2007 "This year, Google met an 'internal' goal of becoming carbon neural."
I'm not saying that there isn't some portion of this that's genuinely driven by the desire to be a "good corporate citizen." Certainly it is possible, especailly for a company, to have multiple motives in pursuing this sort of goal. I'd even go so far as to suggest it's more likely that this sort of thing is done for many reasons instead of merely one.
As mentioned before, they have a good product. But their provision of an adequate search tool (for profit) hasn't completely eliminated my interest in rationally assessing their motives.
I like the KJV in part because the language is so rich. It's like reading Shakespeare or Milton -- you're not necessarily reading it for the content (that's what the newspaper, or a modern translation is for). It's like the difference between a modern song and a hymn. There's nothing _wrong_ with modern songs, but there's something special in the way that the words in old hymns are put together.
:-)
On my Palm I have BibleReader+ which offers a split-window view of two versions (top and bottom) which I really like. When I'm reading the KJV and come to someplace where the rendering is convoluted, I just look at the NEV and see how it would be put by someone using today's simpler syntax. My wife has a parallel New Testament with four (I think) translations in it, which is also nice.
Of course, I'm one of those odd people who read old stuff (Chaucer, Spenser, etc.) for fun
And the proof is in the Slashdot pudding, where posters who are generally skeptical of businesses are all rushing to be the first to gush Google's praises and everyone's all aquiver over how "really responsible" Google is and what what a "role model" they are. Sheesh. When Exxon buys an ad saying how they are all about "saving the wild geese" or whatever, we all know the real deal: Exxon undertakes these projects as a PR exercise. Google is no different.
I like Google's search product (though they seem to be having a harder time defeating illegitimate SEO techniques) but let's be realistic here: they're in business to make money. If green power was a 100% losing proposition, they wouldn't be pursuing it.
interesting.
A relation of mine has said "If I buy a Ford and it's crap, and I buy another Ford and it's crap, and I buy another Ford and it's crap, and then I say 'Ford vehicles are crap' that's rational. Why is it racist if I generalize about my experiences with <racial group x>?" (Of course, it's expressed a little more crudely than that)
Aside from the fact that people are not cars (and everyone has a different nature/nurture background, so no two people are alike) it's hard to find a counter argument. Not that he would be open to a counter argument, of course. The ideas that things can be put into groups and that we can base expectations on our experience are rational. Just not in this case. But saying "it doesn't work like that" isn't enough to counter that pattern-matching behavior.