...now many (most?) of us pay, sometimes rather significant amounts of money, in order to bring a signal and service package into our homes.
Don't the advertisements pay just for the programming? Last I checked, our subscription pays for the cable service and as incentive for cable companies to make new channels available. What TiVo's data will essentially do is allow advertisers to have more say in how much a program's advertising time is worth (and ultimately, how long that show will last).
This is the point where Beckerman and the EFF prefer to intervene in a case. They try to point out that "any real pirate would never leave the meta-data [and] would be using someone else's Internet access account," Beckerman says. "Even seeing the shared file folder doesn't tell you which computer it resided on, because you're seeing files from a group of computers that are connected."...So what if everyone using p2p simply fills in the information of their local congress-critter or favorite lawyer? It looks like the RIAA is doing only cursory checks to see if their information is accurate before letting the lawsuits fly. It'd be amusing to see what would happen if a boat-load of intellectual property lawyers and politicians were targetted by the association. Or, to fly under the radar, use the names of the secretaries of all the lawyers and politicians in your area for your p2p programs...
We use Sophos at our workplace. I also use other antivirus and antispyware - often to clean up the crap that Sophos doesn't find. Speaking as someone who's familiar with Sophos, I think it's curious that Sophos is telling home users to consider buying Macs. Go to Sophos' website (www.sophos.com) and try to find a home user product... They don't seem to promote any.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think this is a warning shot aimed at Microsoft because of MS' sudden focus on security, to the detriment of companies such as Sophos; send Microsoft's small clientle to the enemy - it's no skin off of Sophos' corporate nose. As a PR exercise, Sophos otherwise just released a piece of fluff. They're talking to an audience that they don't serve or interact with.
What gets my goat about IE7 is that a lot of the useful modules cost money!! Why the heck would someone pay $30 for a download accelerator or a whois module??!
Internet Explorer isn't a bad browser in that it's only somewhat more bloated and slightly slower than Firefox for most of Firefox's features (it's still an improvement over IE6 one has to admit)... And it's pre-bundled. The trade-offs aren't that bad.
However, the fact that if you're a "power user" or if you want to do more current and innovative things on the web, IE7 requires you to pay for the features. That's bound to have a stifling effect.
Think cost/benefit. Terrorists have access to Google Earth and Google Map now. Every joe shmuck can find a military base if he wants to. So, you gonna raid the marines??
You can have all the military data in the world but if all you have is a single AK-47 and a stick of dynamite, what'cha gonna do?? Unless you're the A-Team, I'm guessing not a whole lot.
Same with these anti-satellite weapons... Who is the military protecting us from? The groups with the intercontinental weapons can be rationalized with and the groups without the intercontinental weapons can't make truly effective use of satellite technology without getting squashed either before mounting an attack, during the attack, or from retaliation after the attack. (And if guaranteed squashing isn't going to deter them, not having a satellite feed won't either.)
I'd argue that the best reason for developing anti-satellite technology is to figure out what others are capable of doing - before they're capable of doing it!
I agree that strength and endurance training is important, even for the wrist and forearms, but I don't know if it would help significantly with nerve compression. I practice martial arts fairly seriously and I work on strengthening muscles around joints to prevent breaks and strains. However, if someone torques a joint or puts it at an unusual angle, it still hurts. You can have huge arms like a certain California governor but if you tap the funny bone just right, you still wince in pain.
Carpal tunnel is less extreme but it's a consistent, applied pressure on nerve endings and it's going to have an effect over time if you have poor typing technique, regardless of how muscular you are. Exercise will help with fatigue and RSI, but not nerve issues (well, it can, but that's a discussion for a muscle memory thread, rehabilitation thread or peak performance thread - not a thread on carpal tunnel syndrome and rsi).
Pen Based PDA's will be replaced by better tablet pcs.
I am not sure why they have not caught on a lot more, they offer tons on functionality, and decent uptimes.
Take handwritten notes and have them stored in digital format stored immediately?
===
Well, my employer (a K-12 school) pushed me to introduce the iPaq handhelds two years ago. After a lot of poor trial results (dead batteries, cracked screens, difficulty of interface, inferior software to the Palm, etc...) I let the project die like a dinosaur in a tar pit. Administration wasn't particularly happy about that - since we had a partnership with Compaq/HP. It's nice to have the last laugh - yet again.
Now, the school wants to introduce TabletPCs....And I find myself dragging my feet again. TabletPCs have two aspects that make them really useful - they have an additional input method over the laptop, and in pen mode, they take up a much smaller volume compared to a laptop. Tablets also, however, have significant downsides - for the same cost of a tablet, you can get a much better laptop, the single swivelling hinge or detachable keyboard create another point of weakness on the tablet that doesn't really exist on laptops; finally, there are no "killer apps" that take full advantage of the new input method. You can write things in OneNote and store them but then your TabletPC becomes a glorified organizer. When people think "TabletPC", everyone immediately thinks (as you have), "Gee, I can store handwritten notes!" Great. Another tool to organize data rather than synthesize new data. The amount a typical student spends on paper and pens in the entire course of her academic career is significantly less than the cost of a tabletPC that needs refreshing every four years. That's why tablets haven't caught on.
Having said that, I still believe that a pen-based laptop has a place in schools in a few years. There just needs to be more applications that allow tablets to process or create data more effectively, rather than the traditional organization of data; the other possibility is if the cost of tablets come down to match the cost of more fully-featured laptops.
Having seen the movie, "Underworld: Evolution", I'm starting to believe that the concept of evolution needs to be banished, if for no other reason than to prevent entertainment companies from coming up with these ideas.
Underworld: Evolution (movie) Evolution (movie) King of Fighters Evolution (video game) Turok: Evolution (video game)
I can actually understand the need to integrate IE from a business point of view...
My employer started a "virtual school" that operated differently than existing online classes. We invited other schools to join us as a virtual school board and expand everyone's customer base. My employer then had a sudden panic attack because they thought they had "lost control" of the virtual school and all the branding advantage that came with being the first or only. I shrugged because we train all of the other teachers - we ensure that the other schools follow our standards and our best practices... We controlled how others operated and certified that they produced uniform quality stuff. In my opinion, we may have given the other competing schools a lot of marketing freedom, but they ultimately still had to do things our way and that gives our "brand" more credibility than them (and, cynically, since we control quality, we're assured that our competitors can't outperform us).
If Microsoft believes the future is in the Internet and HTML is the language of the Internet, wouldn't it be a good idea to integrate IE into *everything* and "encourage" everyone, including their competitors, to use the same GUI interface and HTML renderer? The third-party vendors can compete with their own wares but Microsoft can ensure how the environment (the Internet) behaves, what the user experiences, and everything looks and behaves like Windows or Office. Think about how often you tell a novice user, "it's like Word". If, at every turn, everything looks and feels like a Microsoft product, Microsoft has created a standard. Remember, the guy might have a responsibility for security but he also has a responsibility for the business side of things.
I would be most curious if a spyware/virus/worm starts using the Sony rootkit as a foundation. Sony actions are not be seen as a "crime" so what happens if the Sony rootkit is then automated and made self-propagating or somebody makes a harmless worm that propagates and hides in the hidden directories.
The malware coder may be tossed before the courts but I wonder if the (lack of) legal reaction to Sony's rootkit can be used as precedence? And if not, can the malware coder then drag Sony into the picture and get himself a reprieve of several decades as Sony's lawyers obfuscates things and bog down the legal process?
Sony may have gotten off lightly now, but it can still come back to haunt them as malicious coders use the company as a legal obstacle to prosecution.
"But what about on personally owned machines? It's my box, I get full access rights, no questions about it."
Two points:
1) OSes really should give you the rights you need if you need them and no more. Of course, if you are the sole administrator of a machine, chances are you will need access to the full range of options offered by the OS. But you don't need all the options all of the time. Compare the amount of time you spend using your machine (for example, applications such as word processing or e-mail or web-browsing) as opposed to the time you spend administrating your machine (such as installing on uninstalling software or setting up a network). The typical user will spend more time using a machine than administrating it, hopefully.
2) Philosophically, you don't have automatic full access to your computer right now anyway, I bet. The second you install an antivirus program, you have effectively given up your right to install known viruses onto your own computer, if you think about it. Same with spyware if you have anti-spyware programs installed on your computer. So, there are certain software you either can't install or have to work really, really hard to install on such a computer. Antivirus and antispyware by the nature of what they do effectively restricts your right to install stuff willy-nilly. Now, did you miss those rights? Did you even notice? In the future, a good OS should automatically be hardened to prevent suspicious application or user behaviour and you probably won't even notice if you are a typical user.
I'm concerned about DRM as much as anyone here, possibly moreso because I work in an laptop-based educational environment and DRM is going to affect students in the classroom and when they're at home.
On the other hand, if Microsoft is serious about security and the other OS platforms grow in popularity, people should eventually end up with just as many access rights as they need to function on their computer and no more. If a DRM like Sony's rootkit were to try to install itself, it would either fail or trigger a warning allowing people to make an informed (yeah, yeah, I know) decision about whether to install the stuff or not.
Any technique used by DRM makers to sneak tracking software into a computer can be used by (more) malicious types to sneak software into a computer. OS makers serious about security would be forced to either patch the problem or offer their own "safe" brand of DRM (as Microsoft seems to be doing). Either way, 3rd party DRM creators probably won't ultimately win this battle.
"'How can I do my thesis now?' a university student asked on another Chinese website."
Gah! The Chinese government's ban of Wikipedia may force their students to research and experiment and think on their own. They may not realize it yet, but China may have just stumbled upon a way to save themselves from creating a North American-style population of instant-gratification seekers.
True, not having access to knowledge is probably worse than having too much knowledge, but Wikipedia is not an authoritative source and to treat it as such is dangerous. A university or high school paper may start with Wikipedia to gain ideas or a broad (if not completely vague or inaccurate) overview of a topic - but then primary sources or multiple peer-reviewed sources should be pulled in to develop the ideas.
Being stonewalled by a lack of a single resource speaks volumes about the student. Government censorship is a pain but it ought to develop more resourceful and creative researchers - or bright, highly sought-after, emigrants. If a student complains about being denied access to Wikipedia, not from an ethical/philosophical point of view but an egocentric one, I have no sympathy.
The editors do a pretty decent job of finding stories we like. Every once and a while, a dupe or ad slips through in addition to submitters with "reputations" so let the people fine-filter these. The editors don't have to worry about dupes or ads or bad submitters, they just focus on topics of interest. Semi-random users - those with particularly good (or excellent) karma - can then be given points to mod these articles "interesting (+1)", "boring (-1)", "dupe (-1)", or "slashdotted (-0.1)" or "available/mirrored (+0.1)". The last two items need work, I know.
This solution allows us to pass judgement on submitters without the editors being forced to censor articles based on subjective tastes (we do that) and it allows us to cut back on the nasty comments when we slashdot the hapless host servers and find a dead link.
With stocks, you have a finite number of shares. A lot of people want to buy a stock, they have to buy at a price that corresponds with the price that a seller finds agreeable. If I buy a million copies of Weird Al Yankovic's latest hit on a "digital music stock market", there are still an infinite more copies left to sell.
What I'd be inclined to do, if a digital music stock market were to exist, is to buy a copy of a song and distribute it free (aka "pirate it") to others. By creating an "alternative distribution channel" (aka "p2p network"), I would be doing consumers a favour by keeping the costs low. Heck, with current laws, a music pirate is treated like a murderer; if digital music were treated like a real stock market, music pirates would get a slap on the wrist like Conrad Black or the CEOs of Enron and their ilk. Heh!
With the number of setbacks the probe has had,I was honestly surprised to hear they made a relatively successful landing (minus the tool deployment). Considering the number of people out there claiming the first lunar landing never happened, I'm also surprised that there aren't more skeptics out there demanding more proof that the probe did land on the asteroid and that this isn't doctored data to help the Japanese space agency save face. I mean, hitting a fast moving target with a glitchy probe is an amazing feat. I guess this isn't a major space agency and this isn't a major project compared to NASA and the first manned lunar landing, so it's not going to attract the attention of the fringe...
I just don't see this flying. DRM and real-time encoding?? So you're limited in what you can do with the file AND it takes 2 hours to convert a 2 hour show and then however long to synch it with the device...
The people who really want to watch movies on their iPods and PSP will either have already created their own (DRM-free) hacks or will have bought the movie on a UMD. The people who only casually thinks, gee, it might be nice to have a copy this week's episode of "Stacked" on my iPod won't want to wait for almost an hour to get a half-hour sitcom... The nice thing about most PVRs and the ol' VCRs is that they're relatively simple to operate. Every additional step and limitation of this new system makes the recording technology less desirable - especially if the media can be found pre-packaged (from iTunes or Sony's UMD format).
Well, I've sent an inquiry to the Brackley Police station. They seem to be the closest police station to Banbury, Oxfordshire, where First 4 Internet resides.
I'll post a response when I get a response from them.
Considering Sony Music/BMG has been in Slashdot an awful lot lately, before we cheer or scream "DOOOOOOM", I want to know how much of Sony-BMG interacts with Sony the computer company? How much will Sony-the-Bad influence Sony-the-Good?
I suspect (hope) Sony is a big enough corporation where the left hand and right hand are fairly independent of each other...
When is it good game design to encourage a player to sit passively for 15 seconds?
Can you imagine something like Unreal Tournament with ads? You stop to watch an ad and you're dead.
How about ads, say, for Coke, on World of Warcraft?
How about ads in real time strategy games? While you're madly clicking away to position your troops, ads randomly pop up to obscure your map...
There are really few situations where advertisements in a game work. GTA style games are probably the best for full motion ads... Except then people would complain it's too much like real life.
Would the revenue from advertisements make up for loss of consumers because of crappy game design???
I think you've hit on several important points, DST is bad for several reasons....But what I'd be interested in seeing is if Canada opts not to follow suite with the US in implementing DST - and what it would mean to the economy...
With stock markets in the States opening earlier than in Canada and closing earlier as well, investors would have a highly reliable crystal ball with which to make decisions... If the economy down south is showing a downward trend, Canadian investors will have an hour's warning time to respond. The chaos would eventually level off but it could create some pretty spectacular short-term profits...
You're right - I think the superbugs commentary in the article my be FUD by and large but they did mention:
"She noted another Toronto-area hospital had to throw out their keyboards when it was battling an outbreak of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, or VRE. 'We could not get the keyboards clean,' McGeer says"
Not knowing how severe VRE is (IANAD - I am not a doctor), I'd be inclined to believe that this is a problem in the present tense... Any bacteria resistant to antibiotics, although not a "superbug", is still probably a bad thing.
The biggest factor in my opinion, is a change in the work environment. Technology was meant to be easier to use and speed our work up for us. What it actually did was make us become reliant on a certain way of doing things and increased our overall workload. This has a two-fold effect by making most technology critical to how we do our jobs and, at the same time, forced us to work at a faster pace. When things break down, the end-user just sees his work quickly piling up and everyone else equally impacted down the line.
Technology is no longer mysterious, it's a necessary tool to achieve a specific end. The technical person is no longer a magician but something akin to an auto-mechanic. And everyone is suspicious of auto-mechanics!
If you still want to be treated well, assist the individual home users who still use dial-up to get their e-mail once or twice a week. They're still happy to get any help when things go badly.
Slashdot Mirror
In the words of Paul Thurrott, "Ah well."
If one considers this quote:
...So what if everyone using p2p simply fills in the information of their local congress-critter or favorite lawyer? It looks like the RIAA is doing only cursory checks to see if their information is accurate before letting the lawsuits fly. It'd be amusing to see what would happen if a boat-load of intellectual property lawyers and politicians were targetted by the association. Or, to fly under the radar, use the names of the secretaries of all the lawyers and politicians in your area for your p2p programs...
This is the point where Beckerman and the EFF prefer to intervene in a case. They try to point out that "any real pirate would never leave the meta-data [and] would be using someone else's Internet access account," Beckerman says. "Even seeing the shared file folder doesn't tell you which computer it resided on, because you're seeing files from a group of computers that are connected."
We use Sophos at our workplace. I also use other antivirus and antispyware - often to clean up the crap that Sophos doesn't find. Speaking as someone who's familiar with Sophos, I think it's curious that Sophos is telling home users to consider buying Macs. Go to Sophos' website (www.sophos.com) and try to find a home user product... They don't seem to promote any.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think this is a warning shot aimed at Microsoft because of MS' sudden focus on security, to the detriment of companies such as Sophos; send Microsoft's small clientle to the enemy - it's no skin off of Sophos' corporate nose. As a PR exercise, Sophos otherwise just released a piece of fluff. They're talking to an audience that they don't serve or interact with.
What gets my goat about IE7 is that a lot of the useful modules cost money!! Why the heck would someone pay $30 for a download accelerator or a whois module??!
Internet Explorer isn't a bad browser in that it's only somewhat more bloated and slightly slower than Firefox for most of Firefox's features (it's still an improvement over IE6 one has to admit)... And it's pre-bundled. The trade-offs aren't that bad.
However, the fact that if you're a "power user" or if you want to do more current and innovative things on the web, IE7 requires you to pay for the features. That's bound to have a stifling effect.
Think cost/benefit. Terrorists have access to Google Earth and Google Map now. Every joe shmuck can find a military base if he wants to. So, you gonna raid the marines??
You can have all the military data in the world but if all you have is a single AK-47 and a stick of dynamite, what'cha gonna do?? Unless you're the A-Team, I'm guessing not a whole lot.
Same with these anti-satellite weapons... Who is the military protecting us from? The groups with the intercontinental weapons can be rationalized with and the groups without the intercontinental weapons can't make truly effective use of satellite technology without getting squashed either before mounting an attack, during the attack, or from retaliation after the attack. (And if guaranteed squashing isn't going to deter them, not having a satellite feed won't either.)
I'd argue that the best reason for developing anti-satellite technology is to figure out what others are capable of doing - before they're capable of doing it!
I agree that strength and endurance training is important, even for the wrist and forearms, but I don't know if it would help significantly with nerve compression. I practice martial arts fairly seriously and I work on strengthening muscles around joints to prevent breaks and strains. However, if someone torques a joint or puts it at an unusual angle, it still hurts. You can have huge arms like a certain California governor but if you tap the funny bone just right, you still wince in pain.
Carpal tunnel is less extreme but it's a consistent, applied pressure on nerve endings and it's going to have an effect over time if you have poor typing technique, regardless of how muscular you are. Exercise will help with fatigue and RSI, but not nerve issues (well, it can, but that's a discussion for a muscle memory thread, rehabilitation thread or peak performance thread - not a thread on carpal tunnel syndrome and rsi).
Pen Based PDA's will be replaced by better tablet pcs.
...And I find myself dragging my feet again. TabletPCs have two aspects that make them really useful - they have an additional input method over the laptop, and in pen mode, they take up a much smaller volume compared to a laptop. Tablets also, however, have significant downsides - for the same cost of a tablet, you can get a much better laptop, the single swivelling hinge or detachable keyboard create another point of weakness on the tablet that doesn't really exist on laptops; finally, there are no "killer apps" that take full advantage of the new input method. You can write things in OneNote and store them but then your TabletPC becomes a glorified organizer. When people think "TabletPC", everyone immediately thinks (as you have), "Gee, I can store handwritten notes!" Great. Another tool to organize data rather than synthesize new data. The amount a typical student spends on paper and pens in the entire course of her academic career is significantly less than the cost of a tabletPC that needs refreshing every four years. That's why tablets haven't caught on.
I am not sure why they have not caught on a lot more, they offer tons on functionality, and decent uptimes.
Take handwritten notes and have them stored in digital format stored immediately?
===
Well, my employer (a K-12 school) pushed me to introduce the iPaq handhelds two years ago. After a lot of poor trial results (dead batteries, cracked screens, difficulty of interface, inferior software to the Palm, etc...) I let the project die like a dinosaur in a tar pit. Administration wasn't particularly happy about that - since we had a partnership with Compaq/HP. It's nice to have the last laugh - yet again.
Now, the school wants to introduce TabletPCs.
Having said that, I still believe that a pen-based laptop has a place in schools in a few years. There just needs to be more applications that allow tablets to process or create data more effectively, rather than the traditional organization of data; the other possibility is if the cost of tablets come down to match the cost of more fully-featured laptops.
Having seen the movie, "Underworld: Evolution", I'm starting to believe that the concept of evolution needs to be banished, if for no other reason than to prevent entertainment companies from coming up with these ideas.
Underworld: Evolution (movie)
Evolution (movie)
King of Fighters Evolution (video game)
Turok: Evolution (video game)
Gah!
I can actually understand the need to integrate IE from a business point of view...
My employer started a "virtual school" that operated differently than existing online classes. We invited other schools to join us as a virtual school board and expand everyone's customer base. My employer then had a sudden panic attack because they thought they had "lost control" of the virtual school and all the branding advantage that came with being the first or only. I shrugged because we train all of the other teachers - we ensure that the other schools follow our standards and our best practices... We controlled how others operated and certified that they produced uniform quality stuff. In my opinion, we may have given the other competing schools a lot of marketing freedom, but they ultimately still had to do things our way and that gives our "brand" more credibility than them (and, cynically, since we control quality, we're assured that our competitors can't outperform us).
If Microsoft believes the future is in the Internet and HTML is the language of the Internet, wouldn't it be a good idea to integrate IE into *everything* and "encourage" everyone, including their competitors, to use the same GUI interface and HTML renderer? The third-party vendors can compete with their own wares but Microsoft can ensure how the environment (the Internet) behaves, what the user experiences, and everything looks and behaves like Windows or Office. Think about how often you tell a novice user, "it's like Word". If, at every turn, everything looks and feels like a Microsoft product, Microsoft has created a standard. Remember, the guy might have a responsibility for security but he also has a responsibility for the business side of things.
I would be most curious if a spyware/virus/worm starts using the Sony rootkit as a foundation. Sony actions are not be seen as a "crime" so what happens if the Sony rootkit is then automated and made self-propagating or somebody makes a harmless worm that propagates and hides in the hidden directories.
The malware coder may be tossed before the courts but I wonder if the (lack of) legal reaction to Sony's rootkit can be used as precedence? And if not, can the malware coder then drag Sony into the picture and get himself a reprieve of several decades as Sony's lawyers obfuscates things and bog down the legal process?
Sony may have gotten off lightly now, but it can still come back to haunt them as malicious coders use the company as a legal obstacle to prosecution.
"Monte Cook making a low magic game? Geez, Monte has a reputation for making extremely magical and powerful additions to DnD."
The D&D guy was "Monty Haul". Monty Hall was the host of "Let's Make A Deal."
Beware of people named Monty or Monte. You're bound to gain a ton of unusable junk or nothing at all.
"But what about on personally owned machines? It's my box, I get full access rights, no questions about it."
Two points:
1) OSes really should give you the rights you need if you need them and no more. Of course, if you are the sole administrator of a machine, chances are you will need access to the full range of options offered by the OS. But you don't need all the options all of the time. Compare the amount of time you spend using your machine (for example, applications such as word processing or e-mail or web-browsing) as opposed to the time you spend administrating your machine (such as installing on uninstalling software or setting up a network). The typical user will spend more time using a machine than administrating it, hopefully.
2) Philosophically, you don't have automatic full access to your computer right now anyway, I bet. The second you install an antivirus program, you have effectively given up your right to install known viruses onto your own computer, if you think about it. Same with spyware if you have anti-spyware programs installed on your computer. So, there are certain software you either can't install or have to work really, really hard to install on such a computer. Antivirus and antispyware by the nature of what they do effectively restricts your right to install stuff willy-nilly. Now, did you miss those rights? Did you even notice? In the future, a good OS should automatically be hardened to prevent suspicious application or user behaviour and you probably won't even notice if you are a typical user.
I'm concerned about DRM as much as anyone here, possibly moreso because I work in an laptop-based educational environment and DRM is going to affect students in the classroom and when they're at home.
On the other hand, if Microsoft is serious about security and the other OS platforms grow in popularity, people should eventually end up with just as many access rights as they need to function on their computer and no more. If a DRM like Sony's rootkit were to try to install itself, it would either fail or trigger a warning allowing people to make an informed (yeah, yeah, I know) decision about whether to install the stuff or not.
Any technique used by DRM makers to sneak tracking software into a computer can be used by (more) malicious types to sneak software into a computer. OS makers serious about security would be forced to either patch the problem or offer their own "safe" brand of DRM (as Microsoft seems to be doing). Either way, 3rd party DRM creators probably won't ultimately win this battle.
"'How can I do my thesis now?' a university student asked on another Chinese website."
Gah! The Chinese government's ban of Wikipedia may force their students to research and experiment and think on their own. They may not realize it yet, but China may have just stumbled upon a way to save themselves from creating a North American-style population of instant-gratification seekers.
True, not having access to knowledge is probably worse than having too much knowledge, but Wikipedia is not an authoritative source and to treat it as such is dangerous. A university or high school paper may start with Wikipedia to gain ideas or a broad (if not completely vague or inaccurate) overview of a topic - but then primary sources or multiple peer-reviewed sources should be pulled in to develop the ideas.
Being stonewalled by a lack of a single resource speaks volumes about the student. Government censorship is a pain but it ought to develop more resourceful and creative researchers - or bright, highly sought-after, emigrants. If a student complains about being denied access to Wikipedia, not from an ethical/philosophical point of view but an egocentric one, I have no sympathy.
The editors do a pretty decent job of finding stories we like. Every once and a while, a dupe or ad slips through in addition to submitters with "reputations" so let the people fine-filter these. The editors don't have to worry about dupes or ads or bad submitters, they just focus on topics of interest. Semi-random users - those with particularly good (or excellent) karma - can then be given points to mod these articles "interesting (+1)", "boring (-1)", "dupe (-1)", or "slashdotted (-0.1)" or "available/mirrored (+0.1)". The last two items need work, I know.
This solution allows us to pass judgement on submitters without the editors being forced to censor articles based on subjective tastes (we do that) and it allows us to cut back on the nasty comments when we slashdot the hapless host servers and find a dead link.
With stocks, you have a finite number of shares. A lot of people want to buy a stock, they have to buy at a price that corresponds with the price that a seller finds agreeable. If I buy a million copies of Weird Al Yankovic's latest hit on a "digital music stock market", there are still an infinite more copies left to sell.
What I'd be inclined to do, if a digital music stock market were to exist, is to buy a copy of a song and distribute it free (aka "pirate it") to others. By creating an "alternative distribution channel" (aka "p2p network"), I would be doing consumers a favour by keeping the costs low. Heck, with current laws, a music pirate is treated like a murderer; if digital music were treated like a real stock market, music pirates would get a slap on the wrist like Conrad Black or the CEOs of Enron and their ilk. Heh!
With the number of setbacks the probe has had,I was honestly surprised to hear they made a relatively successful landing (minus the tool deployment). Considering the number of people out there claiming the first lunar landing never happened, I'm also surprised that there aren't more skeptics out there demanding more proof that the probe did land on the asteroid and that this isn't doctored data to help the Japanese space agency save face. I mean, hitting a fast moving target with a glitchy probe is an amazing feat. I guess this isn't a major space agency and this isn't a major project compared to NASA and the first manned lunar landing, so it's not going to attract the attention of the fringe...
I just don't see this flying. DRM and real-time encoding?? So you're limited in what you can do with the file AND it takes 2 hours to convert a 2 hour show and then however long to synch it with the device...
The people who really want to watch movies on their iPods and PSP will either have already created their own (DRM-free) hacks or will have bought the movie on a UMD. The people who only casually thinks, gee, it might be nice to have a copy this week's episode of "Stacked" on my iPod won't want to wait for almost an hour to get a half-hour sitcom... The nice thing about most PVRs and the ol' VCRs is that they're relatively simple to operate. Every additional step and limitation of this new system makes the recording technology less desirable - especially if the media can be found pre-packaged (from iTunes or Sony's UMD format).
Well, I've sent an inquiry to the Brackley Police station. They seem to be the closest police station to Banbury, Oxfordshire, where First 4 Internet resides.
I'll post a response when I get a response from them.
Considering Sony Music/BMG has been in Slashdot an awful lot lately, before we cheer or scream "DOOOOOOM", I want to know how much of Sony-BMG interacts with Sony the computer company? How much will Sony-the-Bad influence Sony-the-Good?
/. knee-jerk reaction. :)
I suspect (hope) Sony is a big enough corporation where the left hand and right hand are fairly independent of each other...
Trying to avoid the usual
When is it good game design to encourage a player to sit passively for 15 seconds?
Can you imagine something like Unreal Tournament with ads? You stop to watch an ad and you're dead.
How about ads, say, for Coke, on World of Warcraft?
How about ads in real time strategy games? While you're madly clicking away to position your troops, ads randomly pop up to obscure your map...
There are really few situations where advertisements in a game work. GTA style games are probably the best for full motion ads... Except then people would complain it's too much like real life.
Would the revenue from advertisements make up for loss of consumers because of crappy game design???
I think you've hit on several important points, DST is bad for several reasons. ...But what I'd be interested in seeing is if Canada opts not to follow suite with the US in implementing DST - and what it would mean to the economy...
With stock markets in the States opening earlier than in Canada and closing earlier as well, investors would have a highly reliable crystal ball with which to make decisions... If the economy down south is showing a downward trend, Canadian investors will have an hour's warning time to respond. The chaos would eventually level off but it could create some pretty spectacular short-term profits...
You're right - I think the superbugs commentary in the article my be FUD by and large but they did mention:
"She noted another Toronto-area hospital had to throw out their keyboards when it was battling an outbreak of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, or VRE. 'We could not get the keyboards clean,' McGeer says"
Not knowing how severe VRE is (IANAD - I am not a doctor), I'd be inclined to believe that this is a problem in the present tense... Any bacteria resistant to antibiotics, although not a "superbug", is still probably a bad thing.
The biggest factor in my opinion, is a change in the work environment. Technology was meant to be easier to use and speed our work up for us. What it actually did was make us become reliant on a certain way of doing things and increased our overall workload. This has a two-fold effect by making most technology critical to how we do our jobs and, at the same time, forced us to work at a faster pace. When things break down, the end-user just sees his work quickly piling up and everyone else equally impacted down the line.
Technology is no longer mysterious, it's a necessary tool to achieve a specific end. The technical person is no longer a magician but something akin to an auto-mechanic. And everyone is suspicious of auto-mechanics!
If you still want to be treated well, assist the individual home users who still use dial-up to get their e-mail once or twice a week. They're still happy to get any help when things go badly.