Guts is something that is lacking from both parties no doubt. I'm a fiscally sound liberal (I don't want to spend money I don't have) so I'm annoyed by it too. A lot of this comes down to a system that forces people to raise massive amounts of money. Whether intended or not, people who give more money are just bound get more access to someone. What we really need is public financing of elections.
I think that the biggest issue when it comes to copyright and technology is education. I'm a Dem and I couldn't image the Democratic politicians I know or met supporting something that's so blatantly a corporate giveaway IF they understood it. Reforming copyright to better fit the modern era of technology sounds good but the devil is in the details. They need the education and its our job to give it to them.
I really hope you don't think that the parties are so close together on issues outside of copyrights and patents because they really aren't. That's not to say that their aren't bad apples on both sides and common ground on some issues but a lot of the party members and elected officials, especially at your local level, tend to be very dedicated in serving their constituents and promoting the common good.
over 50% isn't necessarily high when it comes to female initiated divorce considering that there should be around 50% male initiated divorce as well... now if it was 75% female initiated we'd have something to talk about.
I think its more an issue of management not knowing how to be agile. I'm an AmeriCorps*VISTA working in a local county government office. The County IS Dept. decided that to deal with spam they would hire someone to READ all emails coming from hotmail accounts. I and a number of other VISTAs were very upset since we work with volunteers often, some of whom have hotmail accounts, and this could add a significant delay to our communication with them, especially new volunteers.
Since we weren't getting much information, especially technical, through our department head about the filtering and why it was needed I decided to contact the IS head directly. Not only did I get no useful information, my dept. head slapped me down big time for "going around her". I explained that I wasn't doing that I was trying to understand the technical issues better since as she has said in the past she's not a technical person. She said that she understands we're frustrated but we have to use the hierarchy.
So now we have a county IS system that pays someone to filter out spam from only one domain, we can't talk to volunteers efficiently and some of their messages are wrongly deleted due to them being spam, the senders of the messages aren't alerted to the delay or that their message was deleted, no one outside of IS understands what to do to fix/get around the problem and if someone wants to know more they will get in trouble.
So much for working together to find a solution...
No doubt this a tough issue. I think that no matter what you do in your life and decisions you make, you have to consider how it will affect others. That applies for scientists as well as everyday people.
I don't think scientists should stop researching or slow it significantly except in the absolute most extreme cases. More important is that scientists work with social leaders, other scientist and politicians to develop a framework to direct these technologies to serve the public good. That can go through a patent system, a social movement or any other number of ways. There just needs to be some thought and work put into making changes that will limit the ability of certain technologies to be used in a negative way.
Re:Very normal with such high novice user rate
on
Firefox Slides, IE Gains?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm not sure why tech-savvy people expect all others to know their computer inside and out. PC users will not become significantly more educated because in all honesty why should they need to? Computers are just a tool, a complex tool but still a tool.
People dont' get a computer cuz they want to run Firefox or Office (at least most don't); they do it because they want to check stocks, read the news, talk to family members world wide, share photos and videos, type letters, etc. A lot people on here give Microsoft a ton of crap for lots of good reasons ( and lots of bad ones) but Microsoft seems to have gotten something that seemingly not a lot of people in the tech world haven't. People have computers to complete tasks and to make those tasks easier; anything that makes those tasks harder is useless for a huge portion of the population.
While we all here want people to be safer and we can make some progress on that front, in some sense its not going to happen until computer become much more fool proof. Blame Microsoft for not getting that accomplished if anything.
Yes but...
on
Why Use GTK+?
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· Score: 4, Informative
IBM seems to skip over one of the biggest reasons to NOT use GTK+ - it just doesn't look right on Windows. I'm not sure who said it but a commentator suggested a while ago that one of the reasons open-source programs weren't overtaking closed source was due to a lack of polish (which does of course cover more than just appearance); he used GAIM vs. MSN Messenger as an example. The jarring difference between controls in GTK+ or Java or even Mozilla to some extent vs Win32 is important when you're creating an application for normal end users. In my opinion, that difference can look unprofessional. I would figure that the issue of appearance could be mitigated but it hasn't yet so I don't know for sure.
A question for someone who knows more about GUI toolkits: What are the issues involved in matching the appearance between toolkit controls and the native controls?
What do you mean by Microsoft's open document format not existing? They already are releasing the draft schemas on MSDN.
Why should MA require them to use Open Document? It's not like XML transformations are all that tough as long as we've got the schemas which we should in this case. If Microsoft's public schema isn't complete, MA won't use Microsoft Office because it doesn't comply with the law.
The state seems to be interested in making sure they have perpetual access to the schema. As long as Office writes to that schema than they're happy.
Now I won't claim to know the technical pros and cons of each but ignoring that I'm not sure why MA should or would require Open Document standard support.
It really has to do with their business model falling apart (or so they think). They believe record sales have decreased because of online piracy (they really haven't). Due to various expansions of copyright law, they now believe that they have a right to pretty much anything even slightly related to their artists. Honeslty I don't know why they do this though. It's beyond greed and logical comprehension.
I think part of it has to do with the risk of artists not needing them in the future (which I think is a forgone conclusion) so they want to show how valuable they can be to artists. They might share a bit of this revenue with artists and use it as a way to bolster their status as a vehicle for profit for artists.
I think we need to make a distinction from it being a acted or a real activity. If it depicts a real rape, it needs to be censored for protection of the person raped. If it's an acted rape, then there is consent involved in every bit of the process. Now I may not support or enjoy those types of porn, but honestly why restrict access to them? Can't adults deal with the implications and know that they shouldn't and cannot actually rape?
The crackdown on porn is due to Americans being too afraid to say they use it. I'm sorry but Max Hardcore and the like don't become multi-millionaires by only sex offenders watching him. The industry is a multi-billion dollar industry because surprise! more than a few people like and watch porn. If the FBI is going to put highly trained agents on these issues, then I think we need get rid of the FBI Director and AG and find someone with a bit of common sense.
I'm not seeing what advantage they get by doing this. They have to rewrite a ton of software and cause incompatibilities/performance degredation for their native software.
Why couldn't they just use Palladium or something similar on the PowerPC platform?
This has nothing to do with censorship and who ever wrote the title should be ashamed of themself. People, whether celebrities or politicians deserve to have their personal information kept private when it has no bearing on their ability to do their job. I don't care what a politician does in his or her personal life, I only care what they do when they're dealing with the issues of the day. All these people seem to be saying is that personal issues should be kept out of the public eye. That's not censorship that's just common decency.
My understanding is that unless the shuttle is going to the space station, its in an orbit too different to be able to get to the station. I may be wrong on that. Any confirmation one way or another?
Slashdot Mirror
No disagreement on Russ... he's something special
Guts is something that is lacking from both parties no doubt. I'm a fiscally sound liberal (I don't want to spend money I don't have) so I'm annoyed by it too. A lot of this comes down to a system that forces people to raise massive amounts of money. Whether intended or not, people who give more money are just bound get more access to someone. What we really need is public financing of elections.
Statistics or is this just conjecture?
some of them do become corrupt yes... what I'm saying is that they're not ALL corrupted
oh please... I'm not even going to argue that...
I think that the biggest issue when it comes to copyright and technology is education. I'm a Dem and I couldn't image the Democratic politicians I know or met supporting something that's so blatantly a corporate giveaway IF they understood it. Reforming copyright to better fit the modern era of technology sounds good but the devil is in the details. They need the education and its our job to give it to them.
I really hope you don't think that the parties are so close together on issues outside of copyrights and patents because they really aren't. That's not to say that their aren't bad apples on both sides and common ground on some issues but a lot of the party members and elected officials, especially at your local level, tend to be very dedicated in serving their constituents and promoting the common good.
uh ya... we call it voting
the GLAMOUR of geekdom? Geez this is something new to me :)
over 50% isn't necessarily high when it comes to female initiated divorce considering that there should be around 50% male initiated divorce as well... now if it was 75% female initiated we'd have something to talk about.
Okay I thought I was only one who had a girlfriend like that.
Crap, I meant volunteers emails are deleted because the IS person THINKS its spam, not that it actually is
I think its more an issue of management not knowing how to be agile. I'm an AmeriCorps*VISTA working in a local county government office. The County IS Dept. decided that to deal with spam they would hire someone to READ all emails coming from hotmail accounts. I and a number of other VISTAs were very upset since we work with volunteers often, some of whom have hotmail accounts, and this could add a significant delay to our communication with them, especially new volunteers.
Since we weren't getting much information, especially technical, through our department head about the filtering and why it was needed I decided to contact the IS head directly. Not only did I get no useful information, my dept. head slapped me down big time for "going around her". I explained that I wasn't doing that I was trying to understand the technical issues better since as she has said in the past she's not a technical person. She said that she understands we're frustrated but we have to use the hierarchy.
So now we have a county IS system that pays someone to filter out spam from only one domain, we can't talk to volunteers efficiently and some of their messages are wrongly deleted due to them being spam, the senders of the messages aren't alerted to the delay or that their message was deleted, no one outside of IS understands what to do to fix/get around the problem and if someone wants to know more they will get in trouble.
So much for working together to find a solution...
No doubt this a tough issue. I think that no matter what you do in your life and decisions you make, you have to consider how it will affect others. That applies for scientists as well as everyday people.
I don't think scientists should stop researching or slow it significantly except in the absolute most extreme cases. More important is that scientists work with social leaders, other scientist and politicians to develop a framework to direct these technologies to serve the public good. That can go through a patent system, a social movement or any other number of ways. There just needs to be some thought and work put into making changes that will limit the ability of certain technologies to be used in a negative way.
I'm not sure why tech-savvy people expect all others to know their computer inside and out. PC users will not become significantly more educated because in all honesty why should they need to? Computers are just a tool, a complex tool but still a tool.
People dont' get a computer cuz they want to run Firefox or Office (at least most don't); they do it because they want to check stocks, read the news, talk to family members world wide, share photos and videos, type letters, etc. A lot people on here give Microsoft a ton of crap for lots of good reasons ( and lots of bad ones) but Microsoft seems to have gotten something that seemingly not a lot of people in the tech world haven't. People have computers to complete tasks and to make those tasks easier; anything that makes those tasks harder is useless for a huge portion of the population.
While we all here want people to be safer and we can make some progress on that front, in some sense its not going to happen until computer become much more fool proof. Blame Microsoft for not getting that accomplished if anything.
That's probably cuz firefox hasn't added much of anything in the last year. :)
Um ya, a lot of us know that.
IBM seems to skip over one of the biggest reasons to NOT use GTK+ - it just doesn't look right on Windows. I'm not sure who said it but a commentator suggested a while ago that one of the reasons open-source programs weren't overtaking closed source was due to a lack of polish (which does of course cover more than just appearance); he used GAIM vs. MSN Messenger as an example. The jarring difference between controls in GTK+ or Java or even Mozilla to some extent vs Win32 is important when you're creating an application for normal end users. In my opinion, that difference can look unprofessional. I would figure that the issue of appearance could be mitigated but it hasn't yet so I don't know for sure.
A question for someone who knows more about GUI toolkits: What are the issues involved in matching the appearance between toolkit controls and the native controls?
What do you mean by Microsoft's open document format not existing? They already are releasing the draft schemas on MSDN.
Why should MA require them to use Open Document? It's not like XML transformations are all that tough as long as we've got the schemas which we should in this case. If Microsoft's public schema isn't complete, MA won't use Microsoft Office because it doesn't comply with the law.
The state seems to be interested in making sure they have perpetual access to the schema. As long as Office writes to that schema than they're happy.
Now I won't claim to know the technical pros and cons of each but ignoring that I'm not sure why MA should or would require Open Document standard support.
It really has to do with their business model falling apart (or so they think). They believe record sales have decreased because of online piracy (they really haven't). Due to various expansions of copyright law, they now believe that they have a right to pretty much anything even slightly related to their artists. Honeslty I don't know why they do this though. It's beyond greed and logical comprehension.
I think part of it has to do with the risk of artists not needing them in the future (which I think is a forgone conclusion) so they want to show how valuable they can be to artists. They might share a bit of this revenue with artists and use it as a way to bolster their status as a vehicle for profit for artists.
I think we need to make a distinction from it being a acted or a real activity. If it depicts a real rape, it needs to be censored for protection of the person raped. If it's an acted rape, then there is consent involved in every bit of the process. Now I may not support or enjoy those types of porn, but honestly why restrict access to them? Can't adults deal with the implications and know that they shouldn't and cannot actually rape? The crackdown on porn is due to Americans being too afraid to say they use it. I'm sorry but Max Hardcore and the like don't become multi-millionaires by only sex offenders watching him. The industry is a multi-billion dollar industry because surprise! more than a few people like and watch porn. If the FBI is going to put highly trained agents on these issues, then I think we need get rid of the FBI Director and AG and find someone with a bit of common sense.
I'm not seeing what advantage they get by doing this. They have to rewrite a ton of software and cause incompatibilities/performance degredation for their native software. Why couldn't they just use Palladium or something similar on the PowerPC platform?
This has nothing to do with censorship and who ever wrote the title should be ashamed of themself. People, whether celebrities or politicians deserve to have their personal information kept private when it has no bearing on their ability to do their job. I don't care what a politician does in his or her personal life, I only care what they do when they're dealing with the issues of the day. All these people seem to be saying is that personal issues should be kept out of the public eye. That's not censorship that's just common decency.
Well since I have other things that are a whole lot more important than reading the fucking article I'll leave it up to you.
My understanding is that unless the shuttle is going to the space station, its in an orbit too different to be able to get to the station. I may be wrong on that. Any confirmation one way or another?
A non-existent or incorrect proof can be very elegant I suppose.