Well I originally wrote lawyer but it didn't work in the sentence in terms of diction. "It has come to our attention, and our lawyer's attention," versus "It has come to our attention, and our solicitor's attention,"
As it was the whole thing could have been much better but I wanted to get in before the moderators all moved to the next story.
The computerized system in use in San Francisco and elsewhere is designed to detect even slight changes in the bluegills' vital signs and send an e-mail alert when something is wrong.
From: The Bluegills <bluegills@tank1.resevoir2.dopw.sf.ca.us> To: Bob Thompson <bthompson@dopw.sf.ca.us> Subject: Our Contract
Dear Bob,
We don't want to seem ungrateful and we appreciate all you've done. However, it has just come to our attention, and our solicitor's attention, that our job is to test the water for poison. In light of this we'd like to renegotiate. We're looking forward to hearing back from you ASAP concerning this issue.
You can build accessible CAPTCHAs, using images with a sound backup for blind users. My girlfriend is visually impaired and non-accessible CAPTCHAs are a real problem for her, she can't register at some sites without assistance.
This isn't really a moral or rights issue, it was an internal company blog that was supposed to pertain to the contractor's work. What it is, however, is draconian and foolish. Draconian because it would have been much more effective to discuss this with the employee before pulling out the pink slips. Foolish because of the very real stifling effect it will have on what others say and the kind of culture that will promote. A culture in which open discussion of ideas and up-from-the-bottom thinking are discouraged is dangerous for any organization, but especially for an intelligence organization. It also misses the point of blogs. It appears Jack Ryan would have been fired in this CIA.
Right, but compatibility between completely different architectures is a very different thing indeed. The best you can hope for is for some sort of merged VM system such that it appears like the windows are actually on your desktop while really running in a simulated win32/*nix environment. But they'll never feel native and never run at native speed. Wine is a mess, Windows POSIX compatibility is negligible, and Rosetta is reportedly very slow. Natively reproducing entire unique architectures is seriously non-trivial.
Except it wasn't autoplay. By the article's admission the users had to click through planted images and stumble across an executable masquerading as an image. There is no autoplay equivalent for USB flash drives.
Right, but in order to convince users that updates are worthwhile you need visible differentiation. Especially if the update process is something of a hassle. 1.5 elicited something of a ho-hum from those I know.
I tried the Firefox 2 beta briefly and wasn't impressed. There's very little in the way of real differentiation from 1.5 and 1.5 had very little differentiation from 1.0. Prior to this improvement was obvious, now it seems like there are a few cosmetic and stability/security changes but nothing serious. If you take out Places for 2.0, what's really left? The close button'll be on the tabs, but that seems about the only user-visible improvement.
I'll third it, or whatever you call that. I'm in high school right now and have taken VB.NET, and currently I'm taking C++ and Java. But my real master languages are PHP and JavaScript (most misunderstood powerful language ever) which I learned completely outside of class in early middle school. Add a tiny bit of C picked up in a summer program, MySQL/HTML/CSS to support the PHP, and I should be ready for whatever college/work throws at me. But I know both my high school and I are exceptions.
I spoke with a CMU professor recently and he says that roughly 1/3 of the kids that come into the undergrad CS program don't know how to program, but that by the end of the first year they're up to speed. Although they have a slightly higher attrition rate than the kids that know how to program coming in, the emphasis is slightly.
As far as the US goes, we have national ID as such but two badly repurposed hacks that function along similar lines. There are the state-issued drivers licenses and there is the nationally-issued social security ID number. Both are used extensively in identification, neither really work well. Drivers licenses aren't really meant to prove beyond doubt an identity, can be forged, and differ from state-to-state. Social security IDs are treated by some places as private and others as public and they don't have an actual photo identification card to tie a face to a name and a name to a number. We all resist national IDs here at Slashdot, but they're inevitable. In the information age it is imperative for the streamlining of governments that every citizen end up with their own database row somewhere. Now whether governments should be streamlined or not is an entirely different question. There is some protection to crippling beaurocracy.
This seems like it's part of a broader wave of MS advocacy and transparency that has unfolded over the past year or so. Although I still don't like Microsoft terribly much, these glimpses inside have given me some pause. The employees and culture seem actually decent enough.
If they're experimenting with new stuff (Xen and XGL are pretty risky already) why not add Beagle? It's matured pretty rapidly and with both Vista and Tiger sporting real-time search capability now is the time to get it into Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
That's one of the features already.
/ presentation/
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus-mini
Go there and click Any.
Well I originally wrote lawyer but it didn't work in the sentence in terms of diction.
"It has come to our attention, and our lawyer's attention,"
versus
"It has come to our attention, and our solicitor's attention,"
As it was the whole thing could have been much better but I wanted to get in before the moderators all moved to the next story.
To: Bob Thompson <bthompson@dopw.sf.ca.us>
Subject: Our Contract
Dear Bob,
We don't want to seem ungrateful and we appreciate all you've done. However, it has just come to our attention, and our solicitor's attention, that our job is to test the water for poison. In light of this we'd like to renegotiate. We're looking forward to hearing back from you ASAP concerning this issue.
Sincerely,
Tim, Ed, and Bill
The Bluegills
You can build accessible CAPTCHAs, using images with a sound backup for blind users. My girlfriend is visually impaired and non-accessible CAPTCHAs are a real problem for her, she can't register at some sites without assistance.
Here: http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a =186517,00.asp
This isn't really a moral or rights issue, it was an internal company blog that was supposed to pertain to the contractor's work. What it is, however, is draconian and foolish. Draconian because it would have been much more effective to discuss this with the employee before pulling out the pink slips. Foolish because of the very real stifling effect it will have on what others say and the kind of culture that will promote. A culture in which open discussion of ideas and up-from-the-bottom thinking are discouraged is dangerous for any organization, but especially for an intelligence organization. It also misses the point of blogs. It appears Jack Ryan would have been fired in this CIA.
And, not so incidentally, 80% of PayPal's customers.
Right, but compatibility between completely different architectures is a very different thing indeed. The best you can hope for is for some sort of merged VM system such that it appears like the windows are actually on your desktop while really running in a simulated win32/*nix environment. But they'll never feel native and never run at native speed. Wine is a mess, Windows POSIX compatibility is negligible, and Rosetta is reportedly very slow. Natively reproducing entire unique architectures is seriously non-trivial.
Tin foil.
Cue chair jokes in 3...2...1...
Except it wasn't autoplay. By the article's admission the users had to click through planted images and stumble across an executable masquerading as an image. There is no autoplay equivalent for USB flash drives.
Wow. I knew Slashdot had a habit of posting old news, but this takes the cake. I am so leaving for Digg.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm tagging "registrationrequired".
They've found the second step!
1. Build buggy OS full of security holes
2. Charge 50 dollars a year to fix said bugs
3. Profit!
Write once, debug everywhere.
Zing!
Right, but in order to convince users that updates are worthwhile you need visible differentiation. Especially if the update process is something of a hassle. 1.5 elicited something of a ho-hum from those I know.
I tried the Firefox 2 beta briefly and wasn't impressed. There's very little in the way of real differentiation from 1.5 and 1.5 had very little differentiation from 1.0. Prior to this improvement was obvious, now it seems like there are a few cosmetic and stability/security changes but nothing serious. If you take out Places for 2.0, what's really left? The close button'll be on the tabs, but that seems about the only user-visible improvement.
I well realize that first point. I think the Java/C++/C/VB.NET/ability to pick up random languages quickly will be more beneficial.
This is CMU we're talking about. Maybe at another college you'd get gamers, but when he said 28%, I believed him.
I'll third it, or whatever you call that. I'm in high school right now and have taken VB.NET, and currently I'm taking C++ and Java. But my real master languages are PHP and JavaScript (most misunderstood powerful language ever) which I learned completely outside of class in early middle school. Add a tiny bit of C picked up in a summer program, MySQL/HTML/CSS to support the PHP, and I should be ready for whatever college/work throws at me. But I know both my high school and I are exceptions.
I spoke with a CMU professor recently and he says that roughly 1/3 of the kids that come into the undergrad CS program don't know how to program, but that by the end of the first year they're up to speed. Although they have a slightly higher attrition rate than the kids that know how to program coming in, the emphasis is slightly.
As far as the US goes, we have national ID as such but two badly repurposed hacks that function along similar lines. There are the state-issued drivers licenses and there is the nationally-issued social security ID number. Both are used extensively in identification, neither really work well. Drivers licenses aren't really meant to prove beyond doubt an identity, can be forged, and differ from state-to-state. Social security IDs are treated by some places as private and others as public and they don't have an actual photo identification card to tie a face to a name and a name to a number. We all resist national IDs here at Slashdot, but they're inevitable. In the information age it is imperative for the streamlining of governments that every citizen end up with their own database row somewhere. Now whether governments should be streamlined or not is an entirely different question. There is some protection to crippling beaurocracy.
This seems like it's part of a broader wave of MS advocacy and transparency that has unfolded over the past year or so. Although I still don't like Microsoft terribly much, these glimpses inside have given me some pause. The employees and culture seem actually decent enough.
Breezy doesn't have it by default, so I suspect at some point you installed it.
If they're experimenting with new stuff (Xen and XGL are pretty risky already) why not add Beagle? It's matured pretty rapidly and with both Vista and Tiger sporting real-time search capability now is the time to get it into Linux.