I liked the fact that Commodore keyboards had the alternate symbols printed on the keys. On a Mac I can get alternate symbols using Option with an appropriate letter key, but because those alternate symbols aren't printed on the keys, one either has to memorize them, use a cheatsheet, or find the symbol by trial and error. I've been using Macs for over 10 years and I still have to hunt around for the integral symbol (Option-B). I don't know what the author has against putting mnemonics like that on the keyboard.
it just goes to show that bloggers aren't real journalists as they like to think. That's a rather broad brush to be painting with, eh? they are just a collection of prepubescent [spelling corrected] minded morons. One might say the same about Slashdot posters, based on the moronic comments on a few...and where does that leave you?
Big Pharma doesn't even exist. It's just a bunch of independent companies and academic researchers.
Those academic researchers don't even exist either. They're just a bunch of atoms.
Collective behavior can arise even when the pieces are not actively working together; that behavior can be given a name, whether it's "Joe Smith the biologist" or "Big Pharma".
These things are deterrents, not guarantees--but deterrents are OK. If a kid sees some dirty pictures once in a while, it's probably not going to do any damage; if he has regular access to them, however, then it might turn into an addiction, and warp his sense of what's normal (the definition of normal being up to his parents and his culture). If he has to sneak around to do behavior X, he will probably do less of it than if he can do it in the comfort of his room. (The "forbidden fruit" counterargument comes to mind here, but I won't try to work through that now.)
For behaviors which are inherently dangerous in small doses, better controls are necessary. For things like this, deterrence is enough.
You make a good point, though, that kids put lots of thought into finding ways around your controls, so any security devices put into place should be evaluated on a regular basis. Change those passwords, update that software, whatever.
Actually, when I hear the 'thumpedy-thump" of the ghetto-blasters going down my street, that makes good sense! Now instead of calling the Police, who do nothing, I'll call the MPAA and report a public performance!;->
You beat me to it! I am now considering writing a letter to the RIAA about this. Problem is, I can't actually identify the music involved. "It sounds like 'BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM'."
The lesson I learned from all this is to avoid numbers at all costs because otherwise people create video games where perhaps it is better that none exist.
But Slashdot DOES have numbers: the posting scores. I can't be the only person who writes a post, and then keeps checking back to see what my final score is.:) ("Yay, a 5!")
Patents on implementations are good patents, no problem; but the dumb patents ARE just patents on basic ideas, with no more meat to them. If Amazon wants to protect their implementation of 1-click shopping, fine, but how complicated is the idea itself, that it deserves protection?
Reminds me of an episode from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" where somebody comes around in the Manhattan Project looking for patentable ideas involving nuclear energy. Feynman says "what a ridiculous idea" and rattles off a couple obvious ideas ("stick a nuclear reactor in a submarine, you have a nuclear sub. Stick one on a rocket, you have a nuclear rocket"), and a week later they come by telling them he gets the patents on those ideas (except for one which was already taken). Those should not have been patentable by themselves, and neither should most of these software patents. (On the plus side, submit your black-hole idea...who knows?)
some people said the same back in 00-02 about dvd vs vhs, i'm guessing that worked out for them.
DVD's gave us random access, computer compatibility, and data-storage possibilities, which VHS did not. You can't watch a videotape on a laptop (without a VCR nearby), and the special features on DVDs don't work on videotapes.
What's the difference between DVDs versus HD or Blu-ray? Size, right? So that means I can either get greater picture resolution (which matters to people with big TVs, but some of us don't go in for that sort of thing) or more movie per disc. It'd be nice to get an entire television season on one disk instead of 5 (I'm guessing the new techs are that big, dunno), but it's hardly the must-have feature, or the seachange that DVDs were.
Ultimately, I think most people will get HD either because the movies they want to see are only in that format, or because the machines they use to play them will only read that format. That's how it will be with me, anyway. Or am I missing some boffo feature about HD?
Still, if there were problems in Safari, it would be a good idea for Apple to throw it out there and have black hat hackers try their best on it before actually shipping the iPhone.
Surprise! You've been hacked, hackers! By trying to beat up Safari on Windows, you've helped Apple harden Safari in general, which is good for the Mac, but also good for the iPhone. Apple wouldn't want your attacks on Safari to be linked to the iPhone in its first days of ultra hyped media coverage, so thanks for jumping the gun!
Y'all think this was Apple's motivation, and did hackers fall for the bait?
The losers in *this* case are the "little guys", but if this ruling serves as a *consistent* precedent (applied for everyone, not just for rich corporations) then the little guys will ultimately benefit, I think. Copyright negotiations have gotten so complicated ("Can I show this picture I've bought in my documentary? Yes but only on Tuesdays in March." etc) that only the big players can afford the lawyers needed to negotiate rights properly. If we can strip away some of these unnecessary distinctions (paper vs CD, etc) and make copyright easier to understand for the layperson, that would be a win for small-time artists. See, for example, the recent rate hikes for Internet Radio.
Yeah, the photographers might lose out here because of the new possibilities opened up by computers, but that's hardly a new story. How many inventors have sold off their rights to something they created because they thought it was worthless, only to have it catch on and become enormously successful? Do they get to renegotiate the sale just because the world has changed?
Remember: more competition is always a good thing.
Eh, I'm not sure that Wal-Mart coming to town is a good thing for the town, even if it is additional competition, because Wal-Mart gives you short-term competition but a long-term monopoly. Ditto Microsoft.
But in this case, Safari is going to have to outperform Firefox to beat it (Apple doesn't have the clout to kill Firefox using business practices) so I'd agree with you here (and generally).
Though, if you look at it as the iPhone SDK instead, some of the choices make sense.
My guess is that they didn't really plan to release Safari for Windows. It was just a side effect of the iPhone planning process, but since it's working on Windows now anyway, they figured, "Why not release it?"
The article brought up the analogy with package delivery: in that system, the sender chooses the delivery mechanism, and anyone can receive packages from any of the major delivery companies (FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc) without signing up beforehand or living in a "FedEx building" or what have you.
Now, like most people here probably, I have several email accounts which are forwarded through Gmail; if one email address goes down, someone can send their email to me via one of the other addresses. Except for the reliance on Gmail, this system would help prevent the sort of blackmail mentioned in the article, so long as my ISPs aren't in collusion.
There are two ways in which this could be made more like the snail-mail system. 1) Most people only have one of my email addresses, so they can't choose among them. Giving everyone you meet two or more addresses on different providers would be awkward. The surface-mail system works because people have a unique identifier which does not vary from provider to provider; since namespace issues would make it difficult to give everyone the same username@yahoo.com, username@msn.com, etc, one might replace this with a DNS-type system which would suggest alternate routes for any given email address. 2) My email aggregator is Gmail, which does its own filtering and so could hijack mail from any one of my delivery routes. Separating email-provider and email-aggregator (like when people have an offline mail program like Thunderbird set up to receive from more than one mailserver) would provide more security.
I'm not saying this is at all a good idea; I know too little to understand the consequences. But I wanted to play out the analogy.
But these jackasses who are trying to find some great turth in a TV show are just kidding themselves and proving how much a bunch of techo-dweebs need to clutch onto anything to feel centered in their own little universe.
Yeah! And you know what else I hate? Art museums! All those people going in and trying to find some hidden meaning in paint slathered onto canvas. Such techno-dweebs.
Wait, what's a techno-dweeb, and what does it have to do with being inspired by art?
I will agree with this in part: I think teenagers would benefit from more opportunities to be productive members of society. Some teenagers already do this: they do community service, or they're on sports teams (which entertains the community), or they write software, or what have you. But I suspect that some of that "teenage angst" comes from a life without meaning, a life dedicated to studying and being tested on subjects of no interest, and to playing the cruel social games that go on in high school. Some kids are playing a waiting game ("I can't wait until I graduate/move out/get a job/get a car."), which brings to mind Lennon's adage "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
That doesn't mean that we give 14-year-olds cars or beer or spouses or apartments or full-time jobs. Their brains *are* still developing, and they still need the guidance of their parents. But give them more opportunities for meaning.
Just MHO--I'm 31 in case I sound like a teenager fighting the system.;)
The cops should also not enforce stupid laws. A cop might not know whether this law is stupid or not: sometimes common sense doesn't apply, particularly when you're not very knowledgeable about the subject. Requiring people to show ID to buy cough syrup seems completely ridiculous, if you don't know anything about drug manufacture. Wifi is new enough that cops are probably safer to stick to the law, because for all they know, this guy in the lot is costing the business money. Yeah, he could have used discretion and just given the guy a warning, but that's like giving a speeder a warning: you're not ignoring a bad law, you're showing leniency.
Responsibility for this law falls squarely on the shoulders of the legislators. I'm not sure if low-level judges have the authority to declare laws unconstitutional (that seems to me to occur more in appellate courts, but what do I know), but even if this judge could, I'm not sure if this law is unconstitutional so much as just plain stupid, and stupid is up to the legislature to fix.
You've underestimated my ignorance. Does this mean that I cannot use a MythTV with any cable box at all? Or that I can record and playback shows, but only in a degraded low-definition format (which doesn't bother me) and only if the box comes with a firewire port?
Please tell me where I can buy cablecard ready tuner cards for MythTV. Comcast here has new boxes that DELETE the firewire port, it's not even an option. Therefore recording is limited to Standard Def only.
This sincerely confuses me: is the problem here that MythTV (lacking the aforementioned "cablecard-ready tuner card") can't record in High Definition, or that it won't work with cable boxes at all, or that it won't work with certain channels, or what?
I'm not an AV geek, so this has never been clear to me.
written stories, drawings, visual reproductions (which would include virtual reality), audio recordings, even purely textual descriptions...its not merely a crime to posses child porn. Even seeing it or hearing it is a criminal offense.
And this is very sad. Pedophiles are the great boogeymen of our age, but when it comes down to it, pedophilia is just another kink, albeit one that cannot be indulged in for real. The rise of virtual child pornography should be great news: pedophiles can finally indulge their lusts without involving children. A lot of people are aroused by strange things, including things they would never want to indulge in in reality (rape fantasies, bondage, castration, strangulation, etc). My *guess* is that most people interested in child pornography are unlikely to be interested in molesting children.
The sad thing is that no one will get elected to higher office by expressing sympathy for pedophiles, while anti-pedophilia is used as a smokescreen for all sorts of restrictive legislation, so it's unlikely that Canada's legislation will ever be fixed (except maybe via the courts, who have a greater history of (properly) supporting the rights of the detested).
Potential counterarguments: 1. I understand and support the desire to keep such kinks private, because a) it is repulsive to most people, b) it may be terrible for people who were abused as children, and c) because making it publicly acceptable might attract more people to it. That includes public displays on Second Life, though punishment might better be meted by the people who own the servers, rather than by a government. 2. There is the belief that participating in lusts like this can inflame desire rather than satisfy it. I'm not sure I believe that (it probably depends on the person), and I'd like to see scientific research on the subject. 3. And, of course, anyone who actually does involve real children in their kinks should be punished, rehabilitated (as needed), and prevented from doing so again.
(Disclaimer: I am not sexually attracted to children or teenagers; my own kinks, I would prefer to keep to myself.)
Broder is a moron, but rotating primaries make good sense, and are no more convoluted than the typical sports playoff. (It's not like the primaries are the same time every year, anyhow; who's going to be confused by it?)
Smoke-filled rooms may have given conventions more drama, but is it really so important that conventions be dramatic? If we got rid of the conventions entirely (or just kept them around as tiebreakers and media events), would the result really be less democratic?
I'd love to see a tight primary race going into the convention; who knows, maybe the Dems will have one next year given the current field. But I'm not sure we need it.
My high school was similar (1990-1993): grades in AP and "Enriched" classes were given a 6 percentage point boost when added to the cumulative average (for ranking). Valedictorians typically graduated with a cumulative average of 103%, which always elicited shocked gasps when announced at graduation. (I'm not sure everyone knew about those 6 points, making it that much more mysterious.)
I hadn't thought of it as an incentive to push oneself by taking more difficult classes; that's interesting. For the top students (*raises hand*), however, any non-college-prep course (e.g. programming, shop, introductory languages, etc) was guaranteed to drag down their cumulative average, since the best you could do was 100%. That tended to discourage experimentation.
(I cared less about grades in college and ignored them in graduate school, but it was still a big deal in high school for me, as big a deal as a sports competition anyway. Report-card days would involve people running about asking people about their rankings, seeing who'd moved up or down the standings, etc. Yeah, we were pathetic, whatever.:)
It's worth approaching the local media anyway; there are still good journalists out there surely. And if they turn the story down, what does he lose? Time? He's going after spammers in small claims court: he's got the time to pursue it, and he's not too cynical to believe that battles can't be won.
MS will have the ability to control it all via windows and MSIE (whereas Google does not have the ability to control except via natural). And while Google is tied in with firefox, MSIE still occupies 85% of the market. And with MS's past history, it should be obvious that they will tie all this together and kill off google.
Could you or someone explain just how Microsoft would go about doing that? I suppose Microsoft might start offering adspace on Windows or on their default browser pages, but they could do that now; what does owning DoubleClick have to do with it?
I guess I don't really understand what DoubleClick's assets are, other than tracking data and employees.
Slashdot Mirror
I liked the fact that Commodore keyboards had the alternate symbols printed on the keys. On a Mac I can get alternate symbols using Option with an appropriate letter key, but because those alternate symbols aren't printed on the keys, one either has to memorize them, use a cheatsheet, or find the symbol by trial and error. I've been using Macs for over 10 years and I still have to hunt around for the integral symbol (Option-B). I don't know what the author has against putting mnemonics like that on the keyboard.
it just goes to show that bloggers aren't real journalists as they like to think.
That's a rather broad brush to be painting with, eh?
they are just a collection of prepubescent [spelling corrected] minded morons.
One might say the same about Slashdot posters, based on the moronic comments on a few...and where does that leave you?
Those academic researchers don't even exist either. They're just a bunch of atoms.
Collective behavior can arise even when the pieces are not actively working together; that behavior can be given a name, whether it's "Joe Smith the biologist" or "Big Pharma".
These things are deterrents, not guarantees--but deterrents are OK. If a kid sees some dirty pictures once in a while, it's probably not going to do any damage; if he has regular access to them, however, then it might turn into an addiction, and warp his sense of what's normal (the definition of normal being up to his parents and his culture). If he has to sneak around to do behavior X, he will probably do less of it than if he can do it in the comfort of his room. (The "forbidden fruit" counterargument comes to mind here, but I won't try to work through that now.)
For behaviors which are inherently dangerous in small doses, better controls are necessary. For things like this, deterrence is enough.
You make a good point, though, that kids put lots of thought into finding ways around your controls, so any security devices put into place should be evaluated on a regular basis. Change those passwords, update that software, whatever.
Actually, when I hear the 'thumpedy-thump" of the ghetto-blasters going down my street, that makes good sense! Now instead of calling the Police, who do nothing, I'll call the MPAA and report a public performance! ;->
You beat me to it! I am now considering writing a letter to the RIAA about this. Problem is, I can't actually identify the music involved. "It sounds like 'BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM'."
The lesson I learned from all this is to avoid numbers at all costs because otherwise people create video games where perhaps it is better that none exist.
:) ("Yay, a 5!")
But Slashdot DOES have numbers: the posting scores. I can't be the only person who writes a post, and then keeps checking back to see what my final score is.
Patents on implementations are good patents, no problem; but the dumb patents ARE just patents on basic ideas, with no more meat to them. If Amazon wants to protect their implementation of 1-click shopping, fine, but how complicated is the idea itself, that it deserves protection?
Reminds me of an episode from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" where somebody comes around in the Manhattan Project looking for patentable ideas involving nuclear energy. Feynman says "what a ridiculous idea" and rattles off a couple obvious ideas ("stick a nuclear reactor in a submarine, you have a nuclear sub. Stick one on a rocket, you have a nuclear rocket"), and a week later they come by telling them he gets the patents on those ideas (except for one which was already taken). Those should not have been patentable by themselves, and neither should most of these software patents. (On the plus side, submit your black-hole idea...who knows?)
some people said the same back in 00-02 about dvd vs vhs, i'm guessing that worked out for them.
DVD's gave us random access, computer compatibility, and data-storage possibilities, which VHS did not. You can't watch a videotape on a laptop (without a VCR nearby), and the special features on DVDs don't work on videotapes.
What's the difference between DVDs versus HD or Blu-ray? Size, right? So that means I can either get greater picture resolution (which matters to people with big TVs, but some of us don't go in for that sort of thing) or more movie per disc. It'd be nice to get an entire television season on one disk instead of 5 (I'm guessing the new techs are that big, dunno), but it's hardly the must-have feature, or the seachange that DVDs were.
Ultimately, I think most people will get HD either because the movies they want to see are only in that format, or because the machines they use to play them will only read that format. That's how it will be with me, anyway. Or am I missing some boffo feature about HD?
Y'all think this was Apple's motivation, and did hackers fall for the bait?
The losers in *this* case are the "little guys", but if this ruling serves as a *consistent* precedent (applied for everyone, not just for rich corporations) then the little guys will ultimately benefit, I think. Copyright negotiations have gotten so complicated ("Can I show this picture I've bought in my documentary? Yes but only on Tuesdays in March." etc) that only the big players can afford the lawyers needed to negotiate rights properly. If we can strip away some of these unnecessary distinctions (paper vs CD, etc) and make copyright easier to understand for the layperson, that would be a win for small-time artists. See, for example, the recent rate hikes for Internet Radio.
Yeah, the photographers might lose out here because of the new possibilities opened up by computers, but that's hardly a new story. How many inventors have sold off their rights to something they created because they thought it was worthless, only to have it catch on and become enormously successful? Do they get to renegotiate the sale just because the world has changed?
Remember: more competition is always a good thing.
Eh, I'm not sure that Wal-Mart coming to town is a good thing for the town, even if it is additional competition, because Wal-Mart gives you short-term competition but a long-term monopoly. Ditto Microsoft.
But in this case, Safari is going to have to outperform Firefox to beat it (Apple doesn't have the clout to kill Firefox using business practices) so I'd agree with you here (and generally).
Though, if you look at it as the iPhone SDK instead, some of the choices make sense.
My guess is that they didn't really plan to release Safari for Windows. It was just a side effect of the iPhone planning process, but since it's working on Windows now anyway, they figured, "Why not release it?"
The article brought up the analogy with package delivery: in that system, the sender chooses the delivery mechanism, and anyone can receive packages from any of the major delivery companies (FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc) without signing up beforehand or living in a "FedEx building" or what have you.
Now, like most people here probably, I have several email accounts which are forwarded through Gmail; if one email address goes down, someone can send their email to me via one of the other addresses. Except for the reliance on Gmail, this system would help prevent the sort of blackmail mentioned in the article, so long as my ISPs aren't in collusion.
There are two ways in which this could be made more like the snail-mail system.
1) Most people only have one of my email addresses, so they can't choose among them. Giving everyone you meet two or more addresses on different providers would be awkward. The surface-mail system works because people have a unique identifier which does not vary from provider to provider; since namespace issues would make it difficult to give everyone the same username@yahoo.com, username@msn.com, etc, one might replace this with a DNS-type system which would suggest alternate routes for any given email address.
2) My email aggregator is Gmail, which does its own filtering and so could hijack mail from any one of my delivery routes. Separating email-provider and email-aggregator (like when people have an offline mail program like Thunderbird set up to receive from more than one mailserver) would provide more security.
I'm not saying this is at all a good idea; I know too little to understand the consequences. But I wanted to play out the analogy.
An "iPhone killer app" would be a good thing for Apple, but an "iPhone killer" would be bad, right?
Is Firefox supposed to be an "Internet Explorer killer app"?
But these jackasses who are trying to find some great turth in a TV show are just kidding themselves and proving how much a bunch of techo-dweebs need to clutch onto anything to feel centered in their own little universe.
Yeah! And you know what else I hate? Art museums! All those people going in and trying to find some hidden meaning in paint slathered onto canvas. Such techno-dweebs.
Wait, what's a techno-dweeb, and what does it have to do with being inspired by art?
I will agree with this in part: I think teenagers would benefit from more opportunities to be productive members of society. Some teenagers already do this: they do community service, or they're on sports teams (which entertains the community), or they write software, or what have you. But I suspect that some of that "teenage angst" comes from a life without meaning, a life dedicated to studying and being tested on subjects of no interest, and to playing the cruel social games that go on in high school. Some kids are playing a waiting game ("I can't wait until I graduate/move out/get a job/get a car."), which brings to mind Lennon's adage "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
;)
That doesn't mean that we give 14-year-olds cars or beer or spouses or apartments or full-time jobs. Their brains *are* still developing, and they still need the guidance of their parents. But give them more opportunities for meaning.
Just MHO--I'm 31 in case I sound like a teenager fighting the system.
The cops should also not enforce stupid laws.
A cop might not know whether this law is stupid or not: sometimes common sense doesn't apply, particularly when you're not very knowledgeable about the subject. Requiring people to show ID to buy cough syrup seems completely ridiculous, if you don't know anything about drug manufacture. Wifi is new enough that cops are probably safer to stick to the law, because for all they know, this guy in the lot is costing the business money. Yeah, he could have used discretion and just given the guy a warning, but that's like giving a speeder a warning: you're not ignoring a bad law, you're showing leniency.
Responsibility for this law falls squarely on the shoulders of the legislators. I'm not sure if low-level judges have the authority to declare laws unconstitutional (that seems to me to occur more in appellate courts, but what do I know), but even if this judge could, I'm not sure if this law is unconstitutional so much as just plain stupid, and stupid is up to the legislature to fix.
You've underestimated my ignorance. Does this mean that I cannot use a MythTV with any cable box at all? Or that I can record and playback shows, but only in a degraded low-definition format (which doesn't bother me) and only if the box comes with a firewire port?
:)
Please speak slowly.
Please tell me where I can buy cablecard ready tuner cards for MythTV. Comcast here has new boxes that DELETE the firewire port, it's not even an option. Therefore recording is limited to Standard Def only.
This sincerely confuses me: is the problem here that MythTV (lacking the aforementioned "cablecard-ready tuner card") can't record in High Definition, or that it won't work with cable boxes at all, or that it won't work with certain channels, or what?
I'm not an AV geek, so this has never been clear to me.
written stories, drawings, visual reproductions (which would include virtual reality), audio recordings, even purely textual descriptions...its not merely a crime to posses child porn. Even seeing it or hearing it is a criminal offense.
And this is very sad. Pedophiles are the great boogeymen of our age, but when it comes down to it, pedophilia is just another kink, albeit one that cannot be indulged in for real. The rise of virtual child pornography should be great news: pedophiles can finally indulge their lusts without involving children. A lot of people are aroused by strange things, including things they would never want to indulge in in reality (rape fantasies, bondage, castration, strangulation, etc). My *guess* is that most people interested in child pornography are unlikely to be interested in molesting children.
The sad thing is that no one will get elected to higher office by expressing sympathy for pedophiles, while anti-pedophilia is used as a smokescreen for all sorts of restrictive legislation, so it's unlikely that Canada's legislation will ever be fixed (except maybe via the courts, who have a greater history of (properly) supporting the rights of the detested).
Potential counterarguments:
1. I understand and support the desire to keep such kinks private, because a) it is repulsive to most people, b) it may be terrible for people who were abused as children, and c) because making it publicly acceptable might attract more people to it. That includes public displays on Second Life, though punishment might better be meted by the people who own the servers, rather than by a government.
2. There is the belief that participating in lusts like this can inflame desire rather than satisfy it. I'm not sure I believe that (it probably depends on the person), and I'd like to see scientific research on the subject.
3. And, of course, anyone who actually does involve real children in their kinks should be punished, rehabilitated (as needed), and prevented from doing so again.
(Disclaimer: I am not sexually attracted to children or teenagers; my own kinks, I would prefer to keep to myself.)
Broder is a moron, but rotating primaries make good sense, and are no more convoluted than the typical sports playoff. (It's not like the primaries are the same time every year, anyhow; who's going to be confused by it?)
Smoke-filled rooms may have given conventions more drama, but is it really so important that conventions be dramatic? If we got rid of the conventions entirely (or just kept them around as tiebreakers and media events), would the result really be less democratic?
I'd love to see a tight primary race going into the convention; who knows, maybe the Dems will have one next year given the current field. But I'm not sure we need it.
Garth Brooks was pushing royalties for used CD sales way back when I had a shop that sold used CDs.
Hmm, if artists got royalties for used CDs, shouldn't they have to pay people who sell their CDs? (back to the store I mean).
My high school was similar (1990-1993): grades in AP and "Enriched" classes were given a 6 percentage point boost when added to the cumulative average (for ranking). Valedictorians typically graduated with a cumulative average of 103%, which always elicited shocked gasps when announced at graduation. (I'm not sure everyone knew about those 6 points, making it that much more mysterious.)
:)
I hadn't thought of it as an incentive to push oneself by taking more difficult classes; that's interesting. For the top students (*raises hand*), however, any non-college-prep course (e.g. programming, shop, introductory languages, etc) was guaranteed to drag down their cumulative average, since the best you could do was 100%. That tended to discourage experimentation.
(I cared less about grades in college and ignored them in graduate school, but it was still a big deal in high school for me, as big a deal as a sports competition anyway. Report-card days would involve people running about asking people about their rankings, seeing who'd moved up or down the standings, etc. Yeah, we were pathetic, whatever.
It's worth approaching the local media anyway; there are still good journalists out there surely. And if they turn the story down, what does he lose? Time? He's going after spammers in small claims court: he's got the time to pursue it, and he's not too cynical to believe that battles can't be won.
Could you or someone explain just how Microsoft would go about doing that? I suppose Microsoft might start offering adspace on Windows or on their default browser pages, but they could do that now; what does owning DoubleClick have to do with it?
I guess I don't really understand what DoubleClick's assets are, other than tracking data and employees.