This is probably the best advice I've seen! The programs vary vastly from school to school, what is "CS" at one is "CE" at another or "IT" at another. For the most part, any place hiring programmers will consider CS and CE the same way - it's only really hardware or really theoretical jobs where they care either way.
For example, at my university, there is Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Information and Decision Science.
CS is focused on algorithms, data structures, compilers, although there are some system options.
ECE has a lot more flexibility, you can essentially get a CS degree with only a few hardware classes, or you can get essentially a physics degree, or the more traditional EE curriculum...
IDS is where you go if you want to be an IT/web whore, you have to take a few "real" programming/algorithms type classes, but it's mostly web applications and such.
But, YMMV at any school, so get the catalog, talk to students, etc. Be warned, most students will answer that theirs is best - listen carefully to why they think so.
Both are useful - I use overrated for posts that I would qualify as "not funny" or "not interesting" but aren't really trolls or whatnot. Perhaps maybe there should be "not funny" and "not insightful" as moderation options, which can only counter an existing "funny" or "insightful." And I'd also like to see a "wrong" moderation, because sometimes posts sound nice and insightful, but they are just plain inaccurate.
Redundant is for the 14th person in a row who says something because they clearly couldn't take the time to read the posts that are already there saying the exact same thing -- if someone said approximately what you said and you want to add something to it - respond to them, no need to start a new thread! At the same time, marking post #7 as "redundant" shows a lack of moderator responsibility.
Another thing I'd like to see is an option to make "funny" not count as +1 (from a reader selection, of course). Because while sometimes I enjoy the humor in the funny posts, most of the time it's really lame and a waste of my time to read.
Actually, it's more like Federation == UN. Huamans == US. It is actually quite interesting to look at the parallels...
- Vulcans - England. Our closest ally, more restrained and refined, "discovered" Earth
- Klingons - Russia. During TOS, worst enemy, during TNG became a cautious ally.
- Romulans - China. Still an enemy
There are many other similarities with races, enough to write a thesis on, but also if you look at a few of the TOS episodes, they do remind the viewers in a not-so-subtle way that the Federation is just as bad as the Klingons in some ways, and Voyager is coming back to that trend of showing how Janeway is not always right and how people in the Delta Quadrant fear and hate her for imposing.
Make no mistake about this, it was intentionally a morality play - based on "current society" whatever that was when the show was airing.
For this reason, I'm pretty sure the new series will not be a prequel, despite the rumors... it is too hard to impose modern society *before* 70's society and not have an odd descrepancy...
No way they're gonna be able to tell that you mailed just one person.
Not true - presumably they have multiple boxes on multiple networks that can coordiante and see if more than one of the message was received. In fact, this is most likely the way they do spam detection, not by looking at phrasing.
It's not about not being girly - it's about not reminding them that you are a girl. There is a definite distinction.
I can wear a dress and have flowers in my office if I want to - but if I repeatedly say "you just don't trust me because i'm a girl" or "I can't do that because I'm on my period" then you are making them think about you as being a woman.
Equality is all about de-emphasizing gender, not the opposite.
I shudder every time I hear someone say "I'm discriminted against because I'm x." The real reason is yourself - not your gender, not your age. Sure, there are some people who have preconceived notions that women or blacks or 20-year olds are inferior, but in the tech industry I have yet to meet someone who could not be convinced otherwise.
I don't know how many times I have to say this, but if you don't let people think of you as a woman, then they won't. If you act like "a girl" then they will treat you like one. You may need to work a little harder at first to convince someone that you are every bit as good as the men around you, by taking initiative, but you need to do that to succeed no matter who you are.
I really think people would just rather think they were passed over for a promotion or ignored because of some quality they cannot changed, rather than one they can. Get over it, change yourself.
-Alison, who is getting really annoyed at all of these "I'm discriminated against because I belong to group X" Stories
There are 3 major problems with WEP (which stands for "Wired Equivalanet Privacy," BTW. I will list them in order of increasing severity.
1) Key distribution. If you aren't the only person on the network, getting the key out to other people is a non-trivial task and can be the weakest link.
2) 40-bit - the standard WEP keysize is completely insufficient and can be cracked in relatively no time. 128bit versions of the hardware are available, however, so this is an improvement.
3) This is the biggie - the WEP authentication protocol relies on DNS and is therefore prone to massive man-in-the-middle attacks. There is a paper by Jesse Walker called "Wireless LANs Unsafe at Any Key Size; and analysis of the WEP encapsulation" that I encourage everyone to read.
WEP is especially dangerous because it establishes a false sense of security that cause people to be more willing to send sensitive data over the network. You still need to use some other encryption method on to of WEP - even at best it gives the privacy of a standard ethernet LAN.
Other technologies are under development to improve the state of wireless security, such as the IEEE 802.11 Task Group E, which is trying to develop an authentication scheme suitable for 802.11 wireless networks, or the IEEE 802.1x protocol which will do similar things at a more generic level.
There is no existing good solution to the wireless problem (PPPoE hacks aside).
I'm not black, but I am a female, which in the tech industry may as well be the same. I've definitely experienced sexism on all levels. One thing I have noticed: If there is 1 {insert group here} person, you judge that person on their abilities. If there a half dozen, and they tend to socialize with each other, they are treated based on the stereotype.
I do not doubt for a second that you have been discriminated against, however the best way to fight discrimination is to not let people think of you as a race/gender/religion but as an individual. Distinguish yourself. Most of my friends are white or indian guys. They talk about "stupid females who got into CS at CMU based on gender," but they don't lump me into that group. Period.
At the risk of sounding racist, I have noticed something about black people in particular, more than indians, chinese, or females, they tend to associate exclusively with members of their race. They are asking to be treated "the same." People who form cliques are not liked by those outside the clique. Think back to high school. Did you like the "popular" people? Did you think all "popular" people were dumb?
It's hard being a female (and I'm sure as bad if not worse being black) in the tech industry, but filing class action lawsuits which lump you back into the same group will do nothing to help.
A few months ago I heard Reed Hundt (FCC chairman from 93-97) give a talk, and a lot of it focused on 3g wireless and ATV (HDTV) spectrum. The real problem here is he made a big mistake in granting the ATV spectrum, and for free no less, with very little incentive for the conventional TV stations to vacate their old spectrum until AT LEAST 2006. This is part of why the FCC refuses to create "open access" laws for cable, or why they refuse to regulate content on HDTV. They now realize it is better to not regulate until the technology develops.
This spectrum is ideal for reaching indoors and as such is extremely valuable, however the push to get ATV was stronger than 3G wireless, and that's how it went.
The problem with the FCC is that they have to make decisions long before they know if the technology is viable - long before the industry has done market surveys, long before the technology has been invented. True, the FCC makes a lot of decisions based on deep pockets and power, but they really are trying to fulfill the "public interest, convenience and necessity" in their spectrum allocation.
Think back to the 70's. Computers were only in a few research institutions. You wanted to develop a numbering system and hierarchy that would be simultaneously sufficient and not wasteful. So Here is the birth of 32 bit addressing. 30 years later we realize it isn't so easy to switch over to 128bit while maintaining the 32 bit infrastrucure (I know I'm simplifying the problem a bit, but the idea is the same). These geniuses 30 years ago came up with a great system, but they had no idea what would happen in the next 30 years.
The FCC dug a hole for themselves in the past 5-15 years with spectrum allocation. Add to that the fact that FCC chairmen and commissioners last usually 4 years, and then a whole new breed come in and mess things up again. And add that the commissioners are lawyers, not engineers. And they need to be both.
It sucks that the FCC messed up with the whole ATV thing, and I'm sure whoever Bush appoints will take care of the problem for better or for worse, but they are trying their hardest not to make the same mistakes they have in the past.
I'm also trying to figure out who is and how the hell they're guna manage the assignment of IPv6 blocks. heh.
ARIN (or your friendly regional registry) are selling these just as they are seilling IPv4 addresses now. The worst part? They are actually charging *more* than they are for IPv4 addresses. Anyway, rest assured, those who stand to profit have already taken care of IPv6 assignment.
This depends largely on the frequency that you are transmitting at. Higher frequencies (i.e. microwave) diffract more and therefore you experience a major loss of signal during rain, or even high humidity. Lower frequencies (i.e. FM) do not diffract nearly as much and are more or less unaffected by weather. 2.4GHz is somewhere in the middle there, and the amount that weather effects it is mostly proportional to how directional the antenna is. omnidirectional antennae don't lose much signal in rain, but directional do (dispersion is bigger problem).
If these rumors are indeed true, this may very well be the point. Remember, Microsoft is still working on appealing the decision to split up the company. If they can say "look, we have Office for Linux" and even show that they are losing some of their monopoly on OS's, they can prevent the split-up, which may be in the long term good for the company. I'm sure BillG and all of the executives at M$ wouldn't be doing this if they didn't see financial gain one way or another.
Regardless, this is good news for people who want to use Linux at work, but have Exchange servers - it means they no longer have to have 2 desktop machines, as many people where I used to work did, 1 UNIX (usually Digital, some Linux, a few suns), and 1 over-powered mail-client machine. At my university, I use an emacs-based mail client and I love it - but at work, Lotus Notes is all there is...
Yet yesterday, 90% of slashdot readers berate AOL for providing their suite of access products for Linux
There is no such thing as 90% of slashdot readers berating anything - if they did, you'd have to sift through 200,000 or so posts per article... 90% of the vocal comments on that article may have been against the AOL thing, but I'm not even sure that's true. Granted, I browse with highest scores first unless i'm moderating, but most of the posts I saw were saying that this is a *good* thing - or at least not particularly the product of evil.
Even if 90% of the comments on that article were vehamently against it, that's still only a small percentage of/. readers - 365 comments, many of them by the same users, that's only.18% of the "slashdot community" at best... Believe it or not, not everyone here agrees with everyone else, but don't feel the need to post "no, you're wrong" every time someone disagrees with them (obviously I do, or I wouldn't write this post, but that's beside the point)...
So, for the sake of not being entirely offtopic - Personally I think having Linux as a reasonable desktop competitor to M$ would be great, sure, let the idiots use Linux - people will write applications for them, and we'll write applications for us. However, I don't want to see a linux machine on every desk any more than I want to see an iMac or a Windows machine on every desk... competition is the key to survival... I think it's great the Michael Dell sees a viable market, I think it's great the AOL is supporting linux, these businesses wouldn't do anything they didn't think would succeed... So maybe Linux will put a major dent in M$'s market share, and everyone will get better applications, and better prices. Yay free market economy!
The difference is direction. We don't let our crypto toys leave the country, but we aren't making swiss crypto toys (i.e. ssh) illegal to be offered to americans. The analogy would be if France said that American crypto sites must block access from France to sites that offer American crypto. This is not what happens. I don't necessarily agree with crypto blocking, but it's an entirely different argument.
No, it's not that blatant. However, that is the general idea, but in more subtle ways. Big Evil Corporation (TM), which makes product X, gives megabucks to Columbia to do a research project on the safety of product X. Given that future grants will depend on the goodwill of Big Evil Corporation (TM), don't you think the research Columbia does will be that much less likely to find that product X is bad?
Actually no, that's not how it happens either. Professor X is doing research on technology Y. Company Z sells products related to technology Y. Professor X calls Company Z and says "I want to work on making improvements in technology Y. This may not be directly applicable to what you do, but it will be usable in some way" and he writes a long proposal about what he wants to do. Company Z gets 100 proposals and says "okay, we can fund 20 of these" so they pick the 20 they like best. Professor X, if he's lucky, gets some money so he can pay for grad students and get equipment needed to do *his* research.
While there are certainly downsides, and Jon Katz did a great job of enumerating them, there are indeed upsides to having money-driven academic research. For one, it means that instead of researching an area that will do little but stimulate the mind of the professor and his little grad students, they are more likely to put out a product that will have impact far outside of academia. This bring on positive looks on academic research from the outside, and encourages public funding as well.
The other benefit is that it teaches the grad students and other who work on the project a lot more than just how to program a robot to recognize who it's talking to, it teaches them how to develop a product, talk with corporate sponsors, and "sell" a proposal. This is very valuable if these students or professors leave acadmia.
In my last semester, I was part of a research project that was 66% sponsored by a private company, and 33% sponsored the the "Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance" and the 12 students in this course got to not only apply their skill as engineers, but learned how to give a proposal, conduct cost-benefit analysis, etc, etc. This was probably my most valuable course as an undergrad for that reason.
Academia is just trying to find the happy in-between. They want the public to see the benefit, and the students toget a benefit, while still being able to conduct new and innovative research. I think they're doing a good job.
Out of all the nominees, only one happens to be female. Is ICANN just another "Good ol' Boy" group?
I just don't think this is a big deal though. Don't be so quick to call discrimination... just because a group is mostly one gender doesn't mean it purposefully excludes the other. The vast majority of people in technical positions are male, at the IETF last week, there were perhaps 10% women, and that's a lot better than say the cartel (AFS administrators meeting), etc, etc. IEEE is mostly male, etc.
Being a female engineer, I usually find myself in groups of lots of males, and at most 1 other female, but they don't see me as "the girl," they see me as their coworker. So why should you look at this list, find only one female, and single her out. Just let her be!
Point 1 and 2 are reasons (whether they are correct points or not, i dont know -- IANAL) why this would be legal, points 3-5 are NOT reasons why this would be legal. Actually I have not seen any solid information yet. Does anyone know if this is leagal or not? -- one person says "It's illegal: copyright violation" another says "leaked trade secrets are not protected under copyright laws". Does anyone have an informed opinion, or are all these just opinions?
Actually, 3-5 are reasons. I mean, you can sue someone because you looked up their name in a phone book and chose them, but you will be counter-sued, because you had no basis on the lawsuit. 3-5 give potential ways that Apple was losing money. If apple was losing money, they have a basis to sue. They may not win, but the countersuit wouldn't either...
Trade secrets aren't protected. But, a copywright is still a copywright, whether it is public info. Every propreitary document I have has both a confidentiality statement and a copywright at the start. It is the intellectual property of my employer. A document is copywright because you say it is, not because it is blessed by the government.
There are a very large number of reasons why this is legal, and actually not that "big bad evil company." Some of these have been posted to previous articles, but I will attempt to encapsulate the biggies.
*the photos were most likely copywrighted
*Apple asked the sites to remove and they refused. This is not a case of the person not knowing what they were doing was wrong
*info leaking too early could hurt competition
*info leaking too early could damage chances at getting a patent on the item - once an idea is in the public domain, it is no longer patentable, even if only your design is in the public domain.
*Rumors sites are fun for the fanatics, who have already decided whether or not to buy apple, but they don't actually generate new sales of products, so they aren't losing any business by shutting them down
I haven't seen Apple's analysis, but it is entirely possible that they will lose money out of info being released early, and if they aren't vigilant in stopping this early release of propreitary info, they are setting a bad precedent for future secrets leaking.
This is Apple's business decision and perfectly legal. It is not free speech if you are posting someone else's property.
The idea here is that it is not invasive, it does not require you to be detained, and is presumably not in any way harmful to your health. This is better than the cops throwing you up against a wall and being searched because they think you look like a terrorist, as frequently happens to a friend of mine.
The only danger I see in this is that it is not as reliable as it pretends to be, and it is used for subsequent illegal searches, i.e. they think they see bomb residue on me, but it turns out that I had gardened then I cleaned my bathtub with Mr. Clean (nitrogen and ammonia, yeah!). And then they detain me.
Anything that you have not concealed is not private when you walk outside your home. A cop can stake out your house for days and anything that can be seen from public property is fair game - and I think that is only fair. If they get better technology that allows them to "see" more of you - so be it. So long as they don't abuse it.
BTW, how are patent numbers assigned? This will get the "next" number right? You can't examine the series of patent numbers for unexplained "gaps" can you?
Patent numbers are assigned when the patent is granted, so this patent has a number in the 6 millions. However, even if patents were numbered at the time they were submitted, there are many times more pattents applied for than are granted, as a large number patents are silly, prior art, or just wrong.
Talk about apples and oranges... there is no wireless 'net for the Handspring yet
Actually, according to their grid they do have a few different wireless modules, including an 802.11 compatible module. And it still should come out cheaper than a palm VII, which requires you to use their expensive Palm.net dialup service.
Before everyone starts saying things like "I wonder if I can make a Beowulf cluster" or "Why the hell would someone want to run linux on a watch," let me just say that this makes some sense.
They want a watch that will sync with a computer, like the Timex DataFlash or whatever the hell they call it. They are being lazy, so they want a pre-packaged OS. And it's a lot easier to shrink down linux than it is to shrink down WinCE. I write embedded code for DSP's, and I wish we didn't have to write every single little serial transfer line in ASM, but we are restricted to using this processor for various reasons. If IBM can make a watch, put in a processor that can run Linux, and easily code a little transfer mechanism for it, so be it.
Lots of little computerized devices run various OS's, like Linux - so it's not a big deal!
-nosilA, who is moderately annoyed that there are two "we run linux on this cute little thing" stories in a row.
This thread is silly and I hate to continue it further, but... i know doubleclick gets all sort of info about you, but your credit card numbr?!? how? This is a big deal if the do....
Slashdot Mirror
This is probably the best advice I've seen! The programs vary vastly from school to school, what is "CS" at one is "CE" at another or "IT" at another. For the most part, any place hiring programmers will consider CS and CE the same way - it's only really hardware or really theoretical jobs where they care either way.
For example, at my university, there is Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Information and Decision Science.
CS is focused on algorithms, data structures, compilers, although there are some system options.
ECE has a lot more flexibility, you can essentially get a CS degree with only a few hardware classes, or you can get essentially a physics degree, or the more traditional EE curriculum...
IDS is where you go if you want to be an IT/web whore, you have to take a few "real" programming/algorithms type classes, but it's mostly web applications and such.
But, YMMV at any school, so get the catalog, talk to students, etc. Be warned, most students will answer that theirs is best - listen carefully to why they think so.
-Alison
Both are useful - I use overrated for posts that I would qualify as "not funny" or "not interesting" but aren't really trolls or whatnot. Perhaps maybe there should be "not funny" and "not insightful" as moderation options, which can only counter an existing "funny" or "insightful." And I'd also like to see a "wrong" moderation, because sometimes posts sound nice and insightful, but they are just plain inaccurate.
Redundant is for the 14th person in a row who says something because they clearly couldn't take the time to read the posts that are already there saying the exact same thing -- if someone said approximately what you said and you want to add something to it - respond to them, no need to start a new thread! At the same time, marking post #7 as "redundant" shows a lack of moderator responsibility.
Another thing I'd like to see is an option to make "funny" not count as +1 (from a reader selection, of course). Because while sometimes I enjoy the humor in the funny posts, most of the time it's really lame and a waste of my time to read.
-Alison, who is probably just a humorless bitch
Actually, it's more like Federation == UN. Huamans == US. It is actually quite interesting to look at the parallels...
- Vulcans - England. Our closest ally, more restrained and refined, "discovered" Earth
- Klingons - Russia. During TOS, worst enemy, during TNG became a cautious ally.
- Romulans - China. Still an enemy
There are many other similarities with races, enough to write a thesis on, but also if you look at a few of the TOS episodes, they do remind the viewers in a not-so-subtle way that the Federation is just as bad as the Klingons in some ways, and Voyager is coming back to that trend of showing how Janeway is not always right and how people in the Delta Quadrant fear and hate her for imposing.
Make no mistake about this, it was intentionally a morality play - based on "current society" whatever that was when the show was airing.
For this reason, I'm pretty sure the new series will not be a prequel, despite the rumors... it is too hard to impose modern society *before* 70's society and not have an odd descrepancy...
-Alison
Not true - presumably they have multiple boxes on multiple networks that can coordiante and see if more than one of the message was received. In fact, this is most likely the way they do spam detection, not by looking at phrasing.
-Alison
It's not about not being girly - it's about not reminding them that you are a girl. There is a definite distinction.
I can wear a dress and have flowers in my office if I want to - but if I repeatedly say "you just don't trust me because i'm a girl" or "I can't do that because I'm on my period" then you are making them think about you as being a woman.
Equality is all about de-emphasizing gender, not the opposite.
-Alison
I don't know how many times I have to say this, but if you don't let people think of you as a woman, then they won't. If you act like "a girl" then they will treat you like one. You may need to work a little harder at first to convince someone that you are every bit as good as the men around you, by taking initiative, but you need to do that to succeed no matter who you are.
I really think people would just rather think they were passed over for a promotion or ignored because of some quality they cannot changed, rather than one they can. Get over it, change yourself.
-Alison, who is getting really annoyed at all of these "I'm discriminated against because I belong to group X" Stories
Okay, the only place I could find a soft copy of this is a zip of a word document - sorry, but here's the link
-Alison
There are 3 major problems with WEP (which stands for "Wired Equivalanet Privacy," BTW. I will list them in order of increasing severity.
1) Key distribution. If you aren't the only person on the network, getting the key out to other people is a non-trivial task and can be the weakest link.
2) 40-bit - the standard WEP keysize is completely insufficient and can be cracked in relatively no time. 128bit versions of the hardware are available, however, so this is an improvement.
3) This is the biggie - the WEP authentication protocol relies on DNS and is therefore prone to massive man-in-the-middle attacks. There is a paper by Jesse Walker called "Wireless LANs Unsafe at Any Key Size; and analysis of the WEP encapsulation" that I encourage everyone to read.
WEP is especially dangerous because it establishes a false sense of security that cause people to be more willing to send sensitive data over the network. You still need to use some other encryption method on to of WEP - even at best it gives the privacy of a standard ethernet LAN.
Other technologies are under development to improve the state of wireless security, such as the IEEE 802.11 Task Group E, which is trying to develop an authentication scheme suitable for 802.11 wireless networks, or the IEEE 802.1x protocol which will do similar things at a more generic level.
There is no existing good solution to the wireless problem (PPPoE hacks aside).
-Alison
I'm not black, but I am a female, which in the tech industry may as well be the same. I've definitely experienced sexism on all levels. One thing I have noticed: If there is 1 {insert group here} person, you judge that person on their abilities. If there a half dozen, and they tend to socialize with each other, they are treated based on the stereotype.
I do not doubt for a second that you have been discriminated against, however the best way to fight discrimination is to not let people think of you as a race/gender/religion but as an individual. Distinguish yourself. Most of my friends are white or indian guys. They talk about "stupid females who got into CS at CMU based on gender," but they don't lump me into that group. Period.
At the risk of sounding racist, I have noticed something about black people in particular, more than indians, chinese, or females, they tend to associate exclusively with members of their race. They are asking to be treated "the same." People who form cliques are not liked by those outside the clique. Think back to high school. Did you like the "popular" people? Did you think all "popular" people were dumb?
It's hard being a female (and I'm sure as bad if not worse being black) in the tech industry, but filing class action lawsuits which lump you back into the same group will do nothing to help.
-Alison
A few months ago I heard Reed Hundt (FCC chairman from 93-97) give a talk, and a lot of it focused on 3g wireless and ATV (HDTV) spectrum. The real problem here is he made a big mistake in granting the ATV spectrum, and for free no less, with very little incentive for the conventional TV stations to vacate their old spectrum until AT LEAST 2006. This is part of why the FCC refuses to create "open access" laws for cable, or why they refuse to regulate content on HDTV. They now realize it is better to not regulate until the technology develops.
This spectrum is ideal for reaching indoors and as such is extremely valuable, however the push to get ATV was stronger than 3G wireless, and that's how it went.
The problem with the FCC is that they have to make decisions long before they know if the technology is viable - long before the industry has done market surveys, long before the technology has been invented. True, the FCC makes a lot of decisions based on deep pockets and power, but they really are trying to fulfill the "public interest, convenience and necessity" in their spectrum allocation.
Think back to the 70's. Computers were only in a few research institutions. You wanted to develop a numbering system and hierarchy that would be simultaneously sufficient and not wasteful. So Here is the birth of 32 bit addressing. 30 years later we realize it isn't so easy to switch over to 128bit while maintaining the 32 bit infrastrucure (I know I'm simplifying the problem a bit, but the idea is the same). These geniuses 30 years ago came up with a great system, but they had no idea what would happen in the next 30 years.
The FCC dug a hole for themselves in the past 5-15 years with spectrum allocation. Add to that the fact that FCC chairmen and commissioners last usually 4 years, and then a whole new breed come in and mess things up again. And add that the commissioners are lawyers, not engineers. And they need to be both.
It sucks that the FCC messed up with the whole ATV thing, and I'm sure whoever Bush appoints will take care of the problem for better or for worse, but they are trying their hardest not to make the same mistakes they have in the past.
-Alison
ARIN (or your friendly regional registry) are selling these just as they are seilling IPv4 addresses now. The worst part? They are actually charging *more* than they are for IPv4 addresses. Anyway, rest assured, those who stand to profit have already taken care of IPv6 assignment.
-nosilA
This depends largely on the frequency that you are transmitting at. Higher frequencies (i.e. microwave) diffract more and therefore you experience a major loss of signal during rain, or even high humidity. Lower frequencies (i.e. FM) do not diffract nearly as much and are more or less unaffected by weather. 2.4GHz is somewhere in the middle there, and the amount that weather effects it is mostly proportional to how directional the antenna is. omnidirectional antennae don't lose much signal in rain, but directional do (dispersion is bigger problem).
-Alison
Regardless, this is good news for people who want to use Linux at work, but have Exchange servers - it means they no longer have to have 2 desktop machines, as many people where I used to work did, 1 UNIX (usually Digital, some Linux, a few suns), and 1 over-powered mail-client machine. At my university, I use an emacs-based mail client and I love it - but at work, Lotus Notes is all there is...
-nosilA
There is no such thing as 90% of slashdot readers berating anything - if they did, you'd have to sift through 200,000 or so posts per article... 90% of the vocal comments on that article may have been against the AOL thing, but I'm not even sure that's true. Granted, I browse with highest scores first unless i'm moderating, but most of the posts I saw were saying that this is a *good* thing - or at least not particularly the product of evil.
Even if 90% of the comments on that article were vehamently against it, that's still only a small percentage of
So, for the sake of not being entirely offtopic - Personally I think having Linux as a reasonable desktop competitor to M$ would be great, sure, let the idiots use Linux - people will write applications for them, and we'll write applications for us. However, I don't want to see a linux machine on every desk any more than I want to see an iMac or a Windows machine on every desk... competition is the key to survival... I think it's great the Michael Dell sees a viable market, I think it's great the AOL is supporting linux, these businesses wouldn't do anything they didn't think would succeed... So maybe Linux will put a major dent in M$'s market share, and everyone will get better applications, and better prices. Yay free market economy!
-nosilA
The difference is direction. We don't let our crypto toys leave the country, but we aren't making swiss crypto toys (i.e. ssh) illegal to be offered to americans. The analogy would be if France said that American crypto sites must block access from France to sites that offer American crypto. This is not what happens. I don't necessarily agree with crypto blocking, but it's an entirely different argument.
Actually no, that's not how it happens either. Professor X is doing research on technology Y. Company Z sells products related to technology Y. Professor X calls Company Z and says "I want to work on making improvements in technology Y. This may not be directly applicable to what you do, but it will be usable in some way" and he writes a long proposal about what he wants to do. Company Z gets 100 proposals and says "okay, we can fund 20 of these" so they pick the 20 they like best. Professor X, if he's lucky, gets some money so he can pay for grad students and get equipment needed to do *his* research.
Hope that clears things up.
-nosilA
The other benefit is that it teaches the grad students and other who work on the project a lot more than just how to program a robot to recognize who it's talking to, it teaches them how to develop a product, talk with corporate sponsors, and "sell" a proposal. This is very valuable if these students or professors leave acadmia.
In my last semester, I was part of a research project that was 66% sponsored by a private company, and 33% sponsored the the "Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance" and the 12 students in this course got to not only apply their skill as engineers, but learned how to give a proposal, conduct cost-benefit analysis, etc, etc. This was probably my most valuable course as an undergrad for that reason.
Academia is just trying to find the happy in-between. They want the public to see the benefit, and the students toget a benefit, while still being able to conduct new and innovative research. I think they're doing a good job.
-nosilA
Out of all the nominees, only one happens to be female. Is ICANN just another "Good ol' Boy" group?
I just don't think this is a big deal though. Don't be so quick to call discrimination... just because a group is mostly one gender doesn't mean it purposefully excludes the other. The vast majority of people in technical positions are male, at the IETF last week, there were perhaps 10% women, and that's a lot better than say the cartel (AFS administrators meeting), etc, etc. IEEE is mostly male, etc.
Being a female engineer, I usually find myself in groups of lots of males, and at most 1 other female, but they don't see me as "the girl," they see me as their coworker. So why should you look at this list, find only one female, and single her out. Just let her be!
-nosilA
Actually, 3-5 are reasons. I mean, you can sue someone because you looked up their name in a phone book and chose them, but you will be counter-sued, because you had no basis on the lawsuit. 3-5 give potential ways that Apple was losing money. If apple was losing money, they have a basis to sue. They may not win, but the countersuit wouldn't either...
Trade secrets aren't protected. But, a copywright is still a copywright, whether it is public info. Every propreitary document I have has both a confidentiality statement and a copywright at the start. It is the intellectual property of my employer. A document is copywright because you say it is, not because it is blessed by the government.
-nosilA
There are a very large number of reasons why this is legal, and actually not that "big bad evil company." Some of these have been posted to previous articles, but I will attempt to encapsulate the biggies.
*the photos were most likely copywrighted
*Apple asked the sites to remove and they refused. This is not a case of the person not knowing what they were doing was wrong
*info leaking too early could hurt competition
*info leaking too early could damage chances at getting a patent on the item - once an idea is in the public domain, it is no longer patentable, even if only your design is in the public domain.
*Rumors sites are fun for the fanatics, who have already decided whether or not to buy apple, but they don't actually generate new sales of products, so they aren't losing any business by shutting them down
I haven't seen Apple's analysis, but it is entirely possible that they will lose money out of info being released early, and if they aren't vigilant in stopping this early release of propreitary info, they are setting a bad precedent for future secrets leaking.
This is Apple's business decision and perfectly legal. It is not free speech if you are posting someone else's property.
-nosilA
The idea here is that it is not invasive, it does not require you to be detained, and is presumably not in any way harmful to your health. This is better than the cops throwing you up against a wall and being searched because they think you look like a terrorist, as frequently happens to a friend of mine.
The only danger I see in this is that it is not as reliable as it pretends to be, and it is used for subsequent illegal searches, i.e. they think they see bomb residue on me, but it turns out that I had gardened then I cleaned my bathtub with Mr. Clean (nitrogen and ammonia, yeah!). And then they detain me.
Anything that you have not concealed is not private when you walk outside your home. A cop can stake out your house for days and anything that can be seen from public property is fair game - and I think that is only fair. If they get better technology that allows them to "see" more of you - so be it. So long as they don't abuse it.
-nosilA
Patent numbers are assigned when the patent is granted, so this patent has a number in the 6 millions. However, even if patents were numbered at the time they were submitted, there are many times more pattents applied for than are granted, as a large number patents are silly, prior art, or just wrong.
nosilA
Actually, according to their grid they do have a few different wireless modules, including an 802.11 compatible module. And it still should come out cheaper than a palm VII, which requires you to use their expensive Palm.net dialup service.
nosilA
They want a watch that will sync with a computer, like the Timex DataFlash or whatever the hell they call it. They are being lazy, so they want a pre-packaged OS. And it's a lot easier to shrink down linux than it is to shrink down WinCE. I write embedded code for DSP's, and I wish we didn't have to write every single little serial transfer line in ASM, but we are restricted to using this processor for various reasons. If IBM can make a watch, put in a processor that can run Linux, and easily code a little transfer mechanism for it, so be it.
Lots of little computerized devices run various OS's, like Linux - so it's not a big deal!
-nosilA, who is moderately annoyed that there are two "we run linux on this cute little thing" stories in a row.
This thread is silly and I hate to continue it further, but... i know doubleclick gets all sort of info about you, but your credit card numbr?!? how? This is a big deal if the do....
nosilA