If it's reporting it as an Apple iPod through the USB vendor/product ID's, then Apple can't block it: it would be saying it IS an iPod. If Apple can block it, then it's not lying, it's trying to interoperate.
It's lying as a way to try to interoperate. It's just not lying very well, since it wants to use the Palm software as well so it registers as a different device depending on what it is doing. This makes it easy for Apple to figure out what is a real iPod and what is a Palm reporting itself as an iPod.
The problem is that you'd be punishing a lot more people than those at Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't just sell operating systems for home computers; they sell and support a large number of business applications to a HUGE number of businesses. If Microsoft "went offline" for even just a few months, there'd be huge ripples throughout all sectors of the economy.
Good! Every business knows that doing business with the mafia, while profitable, is very risky. Their partners could be thrown in jail and as a result unable to hold up their part of the bargain. That's one of the reasons people avoid doing business with habitual criminals. If companies avoid doing business with criminal corporations, that motivates corporations to not commit criminal acts and helps to fix the broken markets we're struggling with now.
Imagine if a critical security flaw were found in Windows, or IIS, or SQL Server and Microsoft couldn't patch it because they were "in jail".
There are always critical, unpatched flaws in Windows and related software. That's why there's a whole market of third party security tools and services to put between them and the world and if MS's failure to deliver makes that too expensive, companies can start doing business with less someone who is not a criminal and is less risky to their bottom line. Rip it out and replace it with Apache where no one company being "jailed" will stop you from getting fixes.
Just because you might not use MS products doesn't mean you don't do business with someone who does. It would be a disaster.
It would be volatile in the short term, then settle down and be fine because businesses would adapt and MS would adapt.
I suppose if we're going with the coding analogy, we have to fit lobbying into it somewhere. How confident are you that the development project will come in on time and work as promised when 90% of the coders have taken money or gifts from competitors and foreign governments and companies with a vested financial interest in making sure your code doesn't save your clients any money? They habitually take such money from third parties and use it to convince the boss to renew their contract every year.
Frankly, I'm amazed any effective legislation ever gets written and passed.
I once wrote up a list of classes that I think should be taught to every student before they graduate from high school. Touch typing was on the list around number fourteen. I think it would be great to teach it in schools, but I still can't believe they don't teach even more fundamental and useful mental tools like: informal logic, the rhetorical method, applying the scientific method (why is it 90% of science class just have kids memorize facts about technology and physics?), critical evaluation, memorization techniques, research and statistical evaluation, etc.
As long as the App Store is being so tightly controlled by Apple, I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick with Windows Mobile.
Why Windows Mobile in particular?
...it's at least mostly an open development platform...
But not as open as yet others. So you're making a compromise between the level of flexibility you want to control your phone and development environment, compared to the features and usability offered. You just draw the line in a different place than the average user.
As long as Apple keeps the App Store locked down, it's never going to be able to match the versatility of the WinMo application spectrum.
I think that's the point. You see it as a bug, but Apple is pitching it as a feature, as in, they police the spectrum of apps completely and thus remove the majority of security risks either immediately or when discovered.
It's too bad, because from what I've seen, the iPhone OS seems to be a better OS, but crippling its software development is just a deal breaker for me.
You might find yourself having fewer non-crippled choices if Apple's model is successful. Realistically, people don't want all that many applications on their phone and the range offered on iPhones is actually getting to be bigger than that on other phones. Regardless of if it is more open or not, it makes an attractive market to develop for and that's the kind of thing that can snowball. It's too bad. I prefer a more open and user controllable system with a bit more nuanced and open of security mechanisms and I think it can be done well. Maybe if Apple implements a better, less locked down version for their computers it will trickle down to iPhones.
Obama's anti-gun tendencies, eh? Go ahead and post your bullshit links to conspiracy fantasies on right wing blogs about that tired line. He's letting people bring guns into national parks but I guess thats anti-gun...
I'm not sure you can count that as Obama being pro-gun. Congress appended that clause to the credit card reform legislation Obama was not going to veto unless a rider legalized eating babies. That said, the democrats in congress these days are decidedly pro-gun... which does confuse the hell out of right-wing republican nutjobs who, I might add, are buying ammunition and guns like crazy because they somehow think Obama can write and pass legislation. Obama's stance has, historically, been fairly anti-gun as is McCain's.
Not to mention the people who are bringing guns to protests outside his speaking venues with absolutely no retaliation, something Bush would have never allowed...
This is a very valid point. Bush was quite extreme in restricting protesters, herding them away from any speaking venue and implementing almost paranoid security measures, once going so far as to demand a new, concrete path be put into a park where he was appearing out of fear someone could plant a landmine. People were arrested or kicked out of venues for wearing t-shirts advocating nothing more than "protect our first amendment rights" which apparently Bush's aids thought conflicted with his policies? The Obama administration has been very lenient in this regard, no doubt intentionally giving the right wing talk show circuit no ammunition to claim he's "goin' after our guns". Obama and his cabinet and many of the democratic congrsscritters have gone out of their way to hold open dialogues and have not shirked away from letting frankly hysterical and ill informed whackjobs speak their minds directly to them in the town hall meetings. This is a 180 from the Bush administration's policies.
AppStore is the only way (short of jailbreak) to get software into the iPhone and iPod Touch. There is no such thing as a "developer hardware" that could make your development/testing easier...
Neither of these statements is strictly true. Enterprise developers can distribute their own applications in-house, just not to the general public. Any developer can distribute their applications ad hoc to up to 100 users.
Your app cannot allow any form of access to cussing words or the like.
The rules were never quite that strict and Apple has relaxed the profanity clauses now that they have included parental controls for the iPhone. Their original concern was they wanted to make sure they did not poison the market for younger people by having issues with pornographic programs. Now that parents can lock down the systems, Apple is not as concerned as parents need not avoid purchasing the devices out of the fear of what their children will access.
I'm not too familiar with OS X platforms that work or don't with SharePoint. The problem with some Linux installs, and we have a few, are that dependencies aren't well documented. Your best bet is to use the.net plug in for FF.
And therein lies the big problem. The last time MS was selling "crossplatform" and "futureproof" solutions it was applications built on IE, largely depending on ActiveX, and quite a few gullible people believed them. Those companies are now locked into Web apps they can't afford to upgrade or replace and are constantly shelling out license fees to MS just to set up another Web terminal that should cost nothing. Why would any administrator/purchaser in their right mind assume Sharepoint is going to be any different? If Sharepoint doesn't work well now with any browser and any OS without an MS proprietary plug-in... why would one think it would do so in five or ten years when MS's financial interests are just the opposite? Sharepoint seems completely inflexible and closed and offers implementors no guarantees for the future. The only reason I can see to implement it is if you don't plan to be around to deal with the mess five years down the road.
The other problem is that a lot of companies are told about all the wonderful things that SharePoint does, except, most of the integrators doing the selling are telling you about things that have to added on to the system.
Or, of course, that they only work in IE on Windows and if a significant portion of your users might be using Blackberries or iPhones, or Linux netbooks or workstations, or OS X, or anything else in a few years... well they won't be because you built your infrastructure completely dependent upon one vendor.
...most companies that have problems with SharePoint is because they went with a crappy integrator...
The same can be said for any other solution to creating a networked infrastructure. If Sharepoint isn't a turnkey solution and requires a skilled implementor, in my mind I'd much rather pay someone to build me a solution that is more flexible and forward looking.
My experience on the range is that the NATO 5.76mm round, used in the AR has a tendency for the tip of the ogive to flatten out into a spoon like shape on impact which would cause a lot of tumbling in the flesh
From the ballistics I've read and my personal experience shooting targets with 2x4 backings... they go straight through a lot of the time making a small, neat hole. Of course the target material and particular round makes a big difference.
Comparing the 5.56, a high energy round to the 7.62 a high power round get religious fast like comparing EMACS to VIM or Windows to Linux.
Yeah, I've heard many people on both sides. I'm a.308 and 30-06 kind of guy myself, so I guess that makes me analogous to either a Solaris or BBedit user in keeping with the analogy:)
...the 7.62's accuracy far exceeds my accuracy
To be clear, I was talking about the majority of AK-47 rifles on the market, not the round itself. There are lots of very nice, accurate 7.62 rifles, including a subset of AK-47 rifles. The accuracy of the cheap AK's is, well not so good and shooting at plastic "3-D" man targets from as close as 15 meters will result in oblong holes made by rounds that had to be tumbling before they hit it. Accuracy at 100 meters with those particular rifles is very iffy.
Everyone still has Office installed of course, since they actually do have to communicate with people outside the DC government as well.
I don't understand your reasoning. Why could they not send.doc files or.xls or.pdf files generated by Google Docs and use it to read said docs when communicating with external companies and organizations? Are you trolling or do you have some rationale you did not bother to explain?
As an open source evangelist, I also regretfully agree. While there are substitutes for many *parts* of the Exchange ecosystem, there is no other truly integrated system that works as well...
I would put a caveat here. Nothing works as well, out of the box from one provider. If, you're willing to pay someone to put together a solution for you using CalDav, OpenOffice, etc. it can be integrated just as well, and sometimes better. The issue being, you actually have to pay someone like Redhat, IBM, or Canonical to build a good solution and you have to have a good idea of what you want. This is, or course, not how big business in the US works. Sure IBM does a lot of business, but mostly in selling lock-in to their services to people without a proper set of requirements. It's the same as MS, supply the hookers and blow to whoever is purchasing a solution and they'll take whatever you offer them.
If you want to know how Google Apps as a whole compares to Exchange as a whole, compare the Google Apps spreadsheet application to MS Excel. Sure, it covers the functionality needed by little Johnny figuring out what a spreadsheet is, but the minute you need to do any *real* spreadsheet work, Google Apps just doesn't deliver.
In my experience 99% of users never do any *real* spreadsheet work as you have defined it. The issue with Google Docs in this case is mostly momentum for all the templates in use out there today and all the places that won't change because change is hard and they don't have to. For the other 1%, most of them are covered by OO.org and most of the rest are lock-in liability situations where people have build brittle solutions and entrenched workflows probably are stuck on Win2K and some other software that will never be updated, and are using packages that were a terrible idea to start with and you need some serious professional help migrating and starting something flexible that can go forward.
That is true of the whole Google Apps framework. It's great for high school study groups and perhaps even university clubhouses, but when heavy lifting needs to be done, it doesn't cut the mustard.
I disagree here. For some use cases they certainly are not as productive as MSOffice, but for most of those it is cases where MSOffice is being misused anyway and people should be using more cost effective tools tailored to their needs. Examples of this are long, technical documents where Word is one of the worst, yet most used solutions. For a few grand you can get enough licenses of a good tool for the people running the project and it can import work from people using Word or Google Docs. The cost will be recovered a dozen times over by the productivity savings. Where MS Office is doing the "heavy lifting" is usually where purchasing and software licensing is so bureaucratically entrenched that nothing other than MSOffice will ever be approved anyway, and users will simply have to suck it up and make do.
For more common, everyday use cases the collaborative capabilities of Google Docs are probably more of an advantage to users workflow.
I *wish* open source could deliver, but it just can't - YET.
It's funny because I've seen it happen, so yes it can deliver. You just need smart people putting it together in the first place and designing a good solution for your needs.
Google Apps, THANK GOD, doesn't deliver. Moving from platform lock in on the desktop to another platform lock in where not only the software that I'm using but also my frakkin' USER DATA is also locked in is literally jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I truly don't understand your concerns. Google exports to several formats cleanly, so you can always migrate to another solution, be it open source or closed or Web apps. Google Apps can source the user data from your LDAP, Domino, or MS-AD server or you can use one of the synch tools to migrate the
And it's frickin fun to shoot targets, sadly the AK-47 is not very accurate.
This depends a lot upon the origin of the firearm. Some of the Russian and Ukrainian AK-47 rifles are quite accurate. Most of the ones one the market, however, are cheaply made in satellite nations or were made in quickly converted facilities in China. The tolerances on those are pretty terrible.
Ballistically, AR-15's and AK-47's are supposed to go straight and fast, hit a target, and tumble in the body doing damage. AR's usually just keep going straight and leave small holes, often just wounding the enemy. Some of the US military argues this is a good thing, because it is better tactically, but the resultant return fire and body count on our side has made that view less popular. AK-47's have to opposite problem. Most of them end up firing a round that tumbles inaccurately and does a lot of damage when it hits, but the likelihood of hitting decreases as the range becomes even moderately long.
I've come to the conclusion that if you want people to change in an organization you have to TAKE AWAY the methods they did it before.
I've come to the conclusion that if you want users to change their methods you have to provide them with a new method that is both learnable and better for them, not just for you. In my experience, sharepoint is generally harder to use than e-mail attachments, makes for a slower workflow, and has a learning curve, especially as it is usually implemented. Seriously, sending an e-mail with an attachment is easier than uploading a file and sending an e-mail with a link to the file. If you want users to have a better method, set up something easier, like a CMS repository that automatically sends an e-mail to the selected users with a short message, using the same interface as the e-mail system.
The problem with migrating users away from e-mail based workflows, is creating workflows that are actually easier for the user than the e-mail based workflow. Mark my words. Provide users with something better and easier, potentially something like Google Wave with an application editing plug-in and (if they do it right) you won't have to force your users to change workflows because they'll be lining up to do it. Users are like a river, following the path of least resistance. Sharepoint is like a pipeline in the river with the IT department as the pump constantly working to try to make users follow a harder workflow.
You don't really work with SharePoint, do you? I mean, this isn't even true and hasn't been for some time.
I do believe you are correct, sort of. I had the misfortune to use SharePoint at a software development company a few years back. Some new management folks brought in implemented it as a company wide solution to all our problems, and did not consult any of the engineering staff, which was the majority of the company. They wanted it to be a surprise. "Surprise! We wasted a lot of money licensing and building a SharePoint solution to solve all our company's problems." Of course the people talked into implementing it by some MS salescreep did not even know what Firefox was or that half the company was using OS X and another quarter using Linux or a BSD on the desktop. SharePoint worked in Firefox, sort of, with lots of random brokenness and in a completely slow and painful way. Of course the default permissions made everything hard and since the people running it had no clue our workflow for posting shared documents became horrible. Where at one point we e-mailed a doc to a few people, or dragged into a network share, it instead became e-mail the file to one of the people who had permission to upload files, then wait for them to start a remote Windows session on VM and upload the file, then e-mail everyone telling them where it was and then wait for the inevitable requests from people for copies of the file since getting it from the SharePoint server was so hard.
Things lasted like that for about a month while they promised to get all the cross platform problems worked out, and then there was a silent revolt. Everyone stopped obeying the corporate directive to use it. Engineering hacked the main page for engineering in SharePoint to be a frame with our internal wiki on it and everyone in the company except a few execs who had implemented it went on with our lives ignoring the crap while the CTO tried to figure out how to get rid of the new dead weight at the top.
So my assessment of SharePoint (as of a few years ago) is it only theoretically works in multiple browsers and OS's and if you actually try using them you;re in for a lot of pain. Further, it is an inferior solution to a decent CMS or even a wiki+network storage. Within engineering it is a watchword for clueless technocrats that will suck your productivity. If a company is using it, look for a job somewhere better and you'll probably be happier.
What I recall reading was that in 2008, DC decided to start transitioning to Google Docs for replacing Word and Excel, and as a starting point for an all web application interface going forward. There was one brief mention that Gmail would be provided as well, but nothing that said they were going to use it as the primary e-mail client/server.
So I guess my question would be, where is DC with this transition and where had they planned to be? Since e-mail was not the focus of the project, where are they with the other applications? Have they signed any new licenses for MSOffice or for a new version? Do they have any desktops without MSOffice? Do any of there users run word processing and spreadsheets with Google Apps instead of Word and Excel?
Let's see you close the divide between the "Haves" and the "Have nots."
We've certainly been working on it and project pioneered at wealthy private schools often are later implemented at public schools. But this isn't a question of money, since it is a private school, simply of effectiveness. Maine, for example, now gives every student a laptop. Since they have already committed to that expense, e-textbooks, especially free ones as well as e-curriculum such as I describe become an increasingly viable and cost effective solution. Pay some people to write the software once and such work can be shared among schools everywhere, very much undermining the argument that this is some sort of financial extravagance. Given the support of higher education in this sort of enterprise, it can be much more beneficial than maintaining the status quo, which is, frankly, hiring under qualified people to teach large groups of students how to pass tests which don't do much towards actually teaching them useful skills and abilities in favor of easily testable metrics that perpetuate said status quo.
Let me know when you get back to reality from your "let's see students actually put together reagents in a computer simulation such that they achieve the desired result."
Yes, because providing very reasonable and doable simulations via computers is so out there we should just stick with our current, misguided programs. Our educational system is much as a method of sorting students as it is a valid attempt at educating. People who resist change given the current system, baffle me. I honestly don't understand the perspective that better funding for a broken model is somehow going to create real benefit.
Either that or please write to your local Legislator that you're willing to pay 60% taxes.
Hyperbole. I am willing to pay more in taxes for a better educational system, but computerizing libraries and moving to books whose copyrights are publicly owned by the schools as well as implementing more interactive programs can be quite cost effective in this day and age. A few smart implementors can disseminate good implementations widely at little or no additional cost, which is pilot programs into this is so important.
If eBook readers were allowed, what would prevent a student from carrying a library worth of books with them?
Why would any sensible society want to stop students from carrying a library full of books with them, even into tests? If your test is on memorizing facts that can be easily looked up in a library of books, then the test is crap. There are a few, very specific cases where specialists actually need data memorized for use cases where they won't have access (EMT for example) but for all the rest we should not consider rote memorization to be education. Tests should be on the ability to apply knowledge usefully in a field of study.
I'm all for modernizing the education system. We've moved past the technological phase where outdated memorization is particularly useful. Forget multiple choice tests on atomic weights, let's see students actually put together reagents in a computer simulation such that they achieve the desired result. Let's see students infer physical properties based upon limited chemical data. Lets see kids apply the scientific method correctly via virtual experiments to determine what a compound is.
By all means make the entire library available to every student in class, during tests, and throughout the rest of their lives. Then we can get on to the important business of learning how to apply knowledge and logical methods to actually do something more than memorize lists for the short period of time between a segment of class and the examination.
You made an action (hiring the men) with the direct intent to cause me harm.
Hiring people is just speaking to them. You could just as easily say I took an action by making a public speech about politics, therefore public speeches about politics aren't protected by free speech laws.
Are people really this obtuse? Threats, yelling "fire" in a theater, slander/libel, conspiracy to commit a felony, numerous RICO violations, false advertising, and fraud are all examples where just speaking can be illegal and is not protected by the first amendment. I truly don't see how people can claim that free speech is an unlimited right and once shown one of these examples I don't understand the mindset where people start making excuses and trying to figure out reasons why speech isn't speech in those cases instead of simply admitting they were wrong and going forward more educated.
Whether it's money or threats of implicit violence, that's not just speech.
Threats of violence are absolutely "just speech" right up until actual violence occurs. Some of the least revolutionary of hate speech laws are laws that make illegal threats and calls for violence against specific groups. By your (completely incorrect) argument those hate speech laws aren't regulating speech at all. I think you're just trying to redefine "speech" in a way to desperately defend your failed argument.
What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"?
So if I hire ten guys to go beat you with sticks and throw stones at your head you think I should be free of criminal liability? After all, I just gave them money and spoke to them, neither of which hurt you directly.
I think the part where you hired them with money ruins the rest of your attempted argument.
I see, so if they're part of my gang an pay me dues and I don't pay them, then it's okay? What if I just promise them money? What if I just convince them I will murder them and their families if they don't? That's just speech.
I think my point is perfectly valid. That point being, freedom of speech is not now and never has been an unlimited right. It is always restricted by compromises when it conflicts with other basic human rights. I'm not particularly in favor of hate speech laws, but I am in favor of a rational and informed discussion. After the 20th or 30th ignorant comment about free speech being unlimited, or that hate speech laws are anything but slightly shifting the balance of where we judge those compromises, I have to say something in the hopes that people will think and educate themselves.
What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"?
So if I hire ten guys to go beat you with sticks and throw stones at your head you think I should be free of criminal liability? After all, I just gave them money and spoke to them, neither of which hurt you directly.
Is anyone really surprised that anti-hatespeech laws violate the basic 'free speech' right? I mean, either a person is free to say what they want or not.
So I should be free from criminal liability because I'm exercising my free speech when I say, "Hey Joey, I need you to go whack this 'Aladrin' fella"? If I just speak and someone else acts I'm in the clear and not guilty of conspiracy to commit murder? Likewise I can create a product and tell everyone it is healthy when in reality I know it will slowly kill them? Since all I'm doing is speaking and they're the ones ingesting it I'm free from civil liabilities because I'm "free to say what I want"?
The limits of free speech have always been where they infringe upon other basic human rights. Free speech is not unlimited. Threatening speech, when direct or a direct call to commit violence has always been considered unprotected. Hate speech laws are about moving that to include threats against specific groups instead of individuals, and sometimes speech that may not be a direct threat but which the courts believe leads people to violent action against those groups.
I'm not saying I support hate speech laws in general or any specific hate speech laws. I'm very conservative on this issue. I just think we should be clear about what we're discussing and the idea that hate speech laws are wrong because free speech is an unlimited right is uninformed and clouds the discussion with misunderstanding.
Hate speech, especially published hate speech, serves no purpose other than to degrade, criminalize or deter a particular person, race, or gender.
Your hateful words with regard to hate speech serve no purpose other than to hurt and degrade people who speak hatefully. We need hate speech legislation to ban hateful speech so you can no longer say such things publicly and we won't have to worry your hateful speech will result in legislation that will ban hateful speech.
I'm not being defensive at all. What I was doing was trying to get you to think logically and scientifically about the issue. scientist's answer to a problem is the application of the scientific method then belief in the most supported theory as the most likely truth until further experimentation changes what has the most support.
It is a logical, formal method of forming beliefs. So what I'm trying to do here here is help both you and I understand what belief you think is most likely true and by what method you formed that belief. Hence my question (which you did not answer) as to how you thought this trait appeared.
Attacking the prevailing theory is not enough to logically form a belief in something else. This is the flaw in creationists' logic. You can't attack one theory and then conclude that belief in the opposite of that theory is true. You have to find more logical support for an alternate theory, whether that is creation of homosexuality by magic or by genetic linkage to other hypothalmic benefits.
Fine, great, so SHOW ME THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE supporting your IDEA that kin selection is the actual mechanism for the continuance of homosexuality in animals.
Well, one would be:
Kin selection and male androphilia in Samoan fa'afafine Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 28, Issue 3, Pages 159-167 P. Vasey, D. Pocock, D. VanderLaan
But that is not a particularly good one since it only looks at one species and so cannot speak to the evolution so much as current, possible correlation.
Because until you collect the evidence and do the statistical analysis on the data for, eg., homosexuality in a particular species, your idea is just as good as any other.
That's a fallacy. You see a falsifiable and testable hypothesis is superior to an untestable hypothesis, even before any testing is done. In this case, however, quite a few studies have been done and kin selection is the most common method of amplifying reproductively negative traits making the the obvious front runner based upon other studies.
...and there ACTUALLY ARE SEVERAL other highly plausible theories for the evolution of homosexuality BTW...
Certainly there are and my point was not that none of the others can be true, but that "skepticism" about one theory is in itself useless unless you present data on an alternative theory. Skepticism by itself, is not a logical method of making decisions or forming beliefs.
Because it just so happens that Bobrow and Bailey DID look into the theory...
Sorry, but that study has been thoroughly rejected by peer review because the methodology, like most studies of this kind, are looking at a single species in its current state which (since the genetic link to homosexuality seems to be cross species) does not inform us sufficiently about the origin on the genetic predisposition. If current gay men don't claim in surveys to give more money to their nieces then straight men, in our society, that doesn't really speak to whether or not they provided more defense and food and shelter over the course of evolution in all species that manifested the trait. To accurately test such a thing we'd need a controlled environment without cultural influences across multiple species.
To say that a study of men in our current society rules out kin selection as a mechanism for the evolution misunderstands both the experimental process and the relevance of the study you quote to the theory in question.
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If it's reporting it as an Apple iPod through the USB vendor/product ID's, then Apple can't block it: it would be saying it IS an iPod. If Apple can block it, then it's not lying, it's trying to interoperate.
It's lying as a way to try to interoperate. It's just not lying very well, since it wants to use the Palm software as well so it registers as a different device depending on what it is doing. This makes it easy for Apple to figure out what is a real iPod and what is a Palm reporting itself as an iPod.
The problem is that you'd be punishing a lot more people than those at Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't just sell operating systems for home computers; they sell and support a large number of business applications to a HUGE number of businesses. If Microsoft "went offline" for even just a few months, there'd be huge ripples throughout all sectors of the economy.
Good! Every business knows that doing business with the mafia, while profitable, is very risky. Their partners could be thrown in jail and as a result unable to hold up their part of the bargain. That's one of the reasons people avoid doing business with habitual criminals. If companies avoid doing business with criminal corporations, that motivates corporations to not commit criminal acts and helps to fix the broken markets we're struggling with now.
Imagine if a critical security flaw were found in Windows, or IIS, or SQL Server and Microsoft couldn't patch it because they were "in jail".
There are always critical, unpatched flaws in Windows and related software. That's why there's a whole market of third party security tools and services to put between them and the world and if MS's failure to deliver makes that too expensive, companies can start doing business with less someone who is not a criminal and is less risky to their bottom line. Rip it out and replace it with Apache where no one company being "jailed" will stop you from getting fixes.
Just because you might not use MS products doesn't mean you don't do business with someone who does. It would be a disaster.
It would be volatile in the short term, then settle down and be fine because businesses would adapt and MS would adapt.
I suppose if we're going with the coding analogy, we have to fit lobbying into it somewhere. How confident are you that the development project will come in on time and work as promised when 90% of the coders have taken money or gifts from competitors and foreign governments and companies with a vested financial interest in making sure your code doesn't save your clients any money? They habitually take such money from third parties and use it to convince the boss to renew their contract every year.
Frankly, I'm amazed any effective legislation ever gets written and passed.
I once wrote up a list of classes that I think should be taught to every student before they graduate from high school. Touch typing was on the list around number fourteen. I think it would be great to teach it in schools, but I still can't believe they don't teach even more fundamental and useful mental tools like: informal logic, the rhetorical method, applying the scientific method (why is it 90% of science class just have kids memorize facts about technology and physics?), critical evaluation, memorization techniques, research and statistical evaluation, etc.
And don't forget, with a broadhead it will slice right through most ballistic vests designed to stop small arms.
As long as the App Store is being so tightly controlled by Apple, I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick with Windows Mobile.
Why Windows Mobile in particular?
...it's at least mostly an open development platform...
But not as open as yet others. So you're making a compromise between the level of flexibility you want to control your phone and development environment, compared to the features and usability offered. You just draw the line in a different place than the average user.
As long as Apple keeps the App Store locked down, it's never going to be able to match the versatility of the WinMo application spectrum.
I think that's the point. You see it as a bug, but Apple is pitching it as a feature, as in, they police the spectrum of apps completely and thus remove the majority of security risks either immediately or when discovered.
It's too bad, because from what I've seen, the iPhone OS seems to be a better OS, but crippling its software development is just a deal breaker for me.
You might find yourself having fewer non-crippled choices if Apple's model is successful. Realistically, people don't want all that many applications on their phone and the range offered on iPhones is actually getting to be bigger than that on other phones. Regardless of if it is more open or not, it makes an attractive market to develop for and that's the kind of thing that can snowball. It's too bad. I prefer a more open and user controllable system with a bit more nuanced and open of security mechanisms and I think it can be done well. Maybe if Apple implements a better, less locked down version for their computers it will trickle down to iPhones.
Obama's anti-gun tendencies, eh? Go ahead and post your bullshit links to conspiracy fantasies on right wing blogs about that tired line. He's letting people bring guns into national parks but I guess thats anti-gun...
I'm not sure you can count that as Obama being pro-gun. Congress appended that clause to the credit card reform legislation Obama was not going to veto unless a rider legalized eating babies. That said, the democrats in congress these days are decidedly pro-gun... which does confuse the hell out of right-wing republican nutjobs who, I might add, are buying ammunition and guns like crazy because they somehow think Obama can write and pass legislation. Obama's stance has, historically, been fairly anti-gun as is McCain's.
Not to mention the people who are bringing guns to protests outside his speaking venues with absolutely no retaliation, something Bush would have never allowed...
This is a very valid point. Bush was quite extreme in restricting protesters, herding them away from any speaking venue and implementing almost paranoid security measures, once going so far as to demand a new, concrete path be put into a park where he was appearing out of fear someone could plant a landmine. People were arrested or kicked out of venues for wearing t-shirts advocating nothing more than "protect our first amendment rights" which apparently Bush's aids thought conflicted with his policies? The Obama administration has been very lenient in this regard, no doubt intentionally giving the right wing talk show circuit no ammunition to claim he's "goin' after our guns". Obama and his cabinet and many of the democratic congrsscritters have gone out of their way to hold open dialogues and have not shirked away from letting frankly hysterical and ill informed whackjobs speak their minds directly to them in the town hall meetings. This is a 180 from the Bush administration's policies.
AppStore is the only way (short of jailbreak) to get software into the iPhone and iPod Touch. There is no such thing as a "developer hardware" that could make your development/testing easier...
Neither of these statements is strictly true. Enterprise developers can distribute their own applications in-house, just not to the general public. Any developer can distribute their applications ad hoc to up to 100 users.
Your app cannot allow any form of access to cussing words or the like.
The rules were never quite that strict and Apple has relaxed the profanity clauses now that they have included parental controls for the iPhone. Their original concern was they wanted to make sure they did not poison the market for younger people by having issues with pornographic programs. Now that parents can lock down the systems, Apple is not as concerned as parents need not avoid purchasing the devices out of the fear of what their children will access.
I'm not too familiar with OS X platforms that work or don't with SharePoint. The problem with some Linux installs, and we have a few, are that dependencies aren't well documented. Your best bet is to use the .net plug in for FF.
And therein lies the big problem. The last time MS was selling "crossplatform" and "futureproof" solutions it was applications built on IE, largely depending on ActiveX, and quite a few gullible people believed them. Those companies are now locked into Web apps they can't afford to upgrade or replace and are constantly shelling out license fees to MS just to set up another Web terminal that should cost nothing. Why would any administrator/purchaser in their right mind assume Sharepoint is going to be any different? If Sharepoint doesn't work well now with any browser and any OS without an MS proprietary plug-in... why would one think it would do so in five or ten years when MS's financial interests are just the opposite? Sharepoint seems completely inflexible and closed and offers implementors no guarantees for the future. The only reason I can see to implement it is if you don't plan to be around to deal with the mess five years down the road.
The other problem is that a lot of companies are told about all the wonderful things that SharePoint does, except, most of the integrators doing the selling are telling you about things that have to added on to the system.
Or, of course, that they only work in IE on Windows and if a significant portion of your users might be using Blackberries or iPhones, or Linux netbooks or workstations, or OS X, or anything else in a few years... well they won't be because you built your infrastructure completely dependent upon one vendor.
...most companies that have problems with SharePoint is because they went with a crappy integrator...
The same can be said for any other solution to creating a networked infrastructure. If Sharepoint isn't a turnkey solution and requires a skilled implementor, in my mind I'd much rather pay someone to build me a solution that is more flexible and forward looking.
My experience on the range is that the NATO 5.76mm round, used in the AR has a tendency for the tip of the ogive to flatten out into a spoon like shape on impact which would cause a lot of tumbling in the flesh
From the ballistics I've read and my personal experience shooting targets with 2x4 backings... they go straight through a lot of the time making a small, neat hole. Of course the target material and particular round makes a big difference.
Comparing the 5.56, a high energy round to the 7.62 a high power round get religious fast like comparing EMACS to VIM or Windows to Linux.
Yeah, I've heard many people on both sides. I'm a .308 and 30-06 kind of guy myself, so I guess that makes me analogous to either a Solaris or BBedit user in keeping with the analogy :)
...the 7.62's accuracy far exceeds my accuracy
To be clear, I was talking about the majority of AK-47 rifles on the market, not the round itself. There are lots of very nice, accurate 7.62 rifles, including a subset of AK-47 rifles. The accuracy of the cheap AK's is, well not so good and shooting at plastic "3-D" man targets from as close as 15 meters will result in oblong holes made by rounds that had to be tumbling before they hit it. Accuracy at 100 meters with those particular rifles is very iffy.
Everyone still has Office installed of course, since they actually do have to communicate with people outside the DC government as well.
I don't understand your reasoning. Why could they not send .doc files or .xls or .pdf files generated by Google Docs and use it to read said docs when communicating with external companies and organizations? Are you trolling or do you have some rationale you did not bother to explain?
As an open source evangelist, I also regretfully agree. While there are substitutes for many *parts* of the Exchange ecosystem, there is no other truly integrated system that works as well...
I would put a caveat here. Nothing works as well, out of the box from one provider. If, you're willing to pay someone to put together a solution for you using CalDav, OpenOffice, etc. it can be integrated just as well, and sometimes better. The issue being, you actually have to pay someone like Redhat, IBM, or Canonical to build a good solution and you have to have a good idea of what you want. This is, or course, not how big business in the US works. Sure IBM does a lot of business, but mostly in selling lock-in to their services to people without a proper set of requirements. It's the same as MS, supply the hookers and blow to whoever is purchasing a solution and they'll take whatever you offer them.
If you want to know how Google Apps as a whole compares to Exchange as a whole, compare the Google Apps spreadsheet application to MS Excel. Sure, it covers the functionality needed by little Johnny figuring out what a spreadsheet is, but the minute you need to do any *real* spreadsheet work, Google Apps just doesn't deliver.
In my experience 99% of users never do any *real* spreadsheet work as you have defined it. The issue with Google Docs in this case is mostly momentum for all the templates in use out there today and all the places that won't change because change is hard and they don't have to. For the other 1%, most of them are covered by OO.org and most of the rest are lock-in liability situations where people have build brittle solutions and entrenched workflows probably are stuck on Win2K and some other software that will never be updated, and are using packages that were a terrible idea to start with and you need some serious professional help migrating and starting something flexible that can go forward.
That is true of the whole Google Apps framework. It's great for high school study groups and perhaps even university clubhouses, but when heavy lifting needs to be done, it doesn't cut the mustard.
I disagree here. For some use cases they certainly are not as productive as MSOffice, but for most of those it is cases where MSOffice is being misused anyway and people should be using more cost effective tools tailored to their needs. Examples of this are long, technical documents where Word is one of the worst, yet most used solutions. For a few grand you can get enough licenses of a good tool for the people running the project and it can import work from people using Word or Google Docs. The cost will be recovered a dozen times over by the productivity savings. Where MS Office is doing the "heavy lifting" is usually where purchasing and software licensing is so bureaucratically entrenched that nothing other than MSOffice will ever be approved anyway, and users will simply have to suck it up and make do.
For more common, everyday use cases the collaborative capabilities of Google Docs are probably more of an advantage to users workflow.
I *wish* open source could deliver, but it just can't - YET.
It's funny because I've seen it happen, so yes it can deliver. You just need smart people putting it together in the first place and designing a good solution for your needs.
Google Apps, THANK GOD, doesn't deliver. Moving from platform lock in on the desktop to another platform lock in where not only the software that I'm using but also my frakkin' USER DATA is also locked in is literally jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I truly don't understand your concerns. Google exports to several formats cleanly, so you can always migrate to another solution, be it open source or closed or Web apps. Google Apps can source the user data from your LDAP, Domino, or MS-AD server or you can use one of the synch tools to migrate the
And it's frickin fun to shoot targets, sadly the AK-47 is not very accurate.
This depends a lot upon the origin of the firearm. Some of the Russian and Ukrainian AK-47 rifles are quite accurate. Most of the ones one the market, however, are cheaply made in satellite nations or were made in quickly converted facilities in China. The tolerances on those are pretty terrible.
Ballistically, AR-15's and AK-47's are supposed to go straight and fast, hit a target, and tumble in the body doing damage. AR's usually just keep going straight and leave small holes, often just wounding the enemy. Some of the US military argues this is a good thing, because it is better tactically, but the resultant return fire and body count on our side has made that view less popular. AK-47's have to opposite problem. Most of them end up firing a round that tumbles inaccurately and does a lot of damage when it hits, but the likelihood of hitting decreases as the range becomes even moderately long.
I've come to the conclusion that if you want people to change in an organization you have to TAKE AWAY the methods they did it before.
I've come to the conclusion that if you want users to change their methods you have to provide them with a new method that is both learnable and better for them, not just for you. In my experience, sharepoint is generally harder to use than e-mail attachments, makes for a slower workflow, and has a learning curve, especially as it is usually implemented. Seriously, sending an e-mail with an attachment is easier than uploading a file and sending an e-mail with a link to the file. If you want users to have a better method, set up something easier, like a CMS repository that automatically sends an e-mail to the selected users with a short message, using the same interface as the e-mail system.
The problem with migrating users away from e-mail based workflows, is creating workflows that are actually easier for the user than the e-mail based workflow. Mark my words. Provide users with something better and easier, potentially something like Google Wave with an application editing plug-in and (if they do it right) you won't have to force your users to change workflows because they'll be lining up to do it. Users are like a river, following the path of least resistance. Sharepoint is like a pipeline in the river with the IT department as the pump constantly working to try to make users follow a harder workflow.
It only works in Internet Explorer
You don't really work with SharePoint, do you? I mean, this isn't even true and hasn't been for some time.
I do believe you are correct, sort of. I had the misfortune to use SharePoint at a software development company a few years back. Some new management folks brought in implemented it as a company wide solution to all our problems, and did not consult any of the engineering staff, which was the majority of the company. They wanted it to be a surprise. "Surprise! We wasted a lot of money licensing and building a SharePoint solution to solve all our company's problems." Of course the people talked into implementing it by some MS salescreep did not even know what Firefox was or that half the company was using OS X and another quarter using Linux or a BSD on the desktop. SharePoint worked in Firefox, sort of, with lots of random brokenness and in a completely slow and painful way. Of course the default permissions made everything hard and since the people running it had no clue our workflow for posting shared documents became horrible. Where at one point we e-mailed a doc to a few people, or dragged into a network share, it instead became e-mail the file to one of the people who had permission to upload files, then wait for them to start a remote Windows session on VM and upload the file, then e-mail everyone telling them where it was and then wait for the inevitable requests from people for copies of the file since getting it from the SharePoint server was so hard.
Things lasted like that for about a month while they promised to get all the cross platform problems worked out, and then there was a silent revolt. Everyone stopped obeying the corporate directive to use it. Engineering hacked the main page for engineering in SharePoint to be a frame with our internal wiki on it and everyone in the company except a few execs who had implemented it went on with our lives ignoring the crap while the CTO tried to figure out how to get rid of the new dead weight at the top.
So my assessment of SharePoint (as of a few years ago) is it only theoretically works in multiple browsers and OS's and if you actually try using them you;re in for a lot of pain. Further, it is an inferior solution to a decent CMS or even a wiki+network storage. Within engineering it is a watchword for clueless technocrats that will suck your productivity. If a company is using it, look for a job somewhere better and you'll probably be happier.
What I recall reading was that in 2008, DC decided to start transitioning to Google Docs for replacing Word and Excel, and as a starting point for an all web application interface going forward. There was one brief mention that Gmail would be provided as well, but nothing that said they were going to use it as the primary e-mail client/server.
So I guess my question would be, where is DC with this transition and where had they planned to be? Since e-mail was not the focus of the project, where are they with the other applications? Have they signed any new licenses for MSOffice or for a new version? Do they have any desktops without MSOffice? Do any of there users run word processing and spreadsheets with Google Apps instead of Word and Excel?
Let's see you close the divide between the "Haves" and the "Have nots."
We've certainly been working on it and project pioneered at wealthy private schools often are later implemented at public schools. But this isn't a question of money, since it is a private school, simply of effectiveness. Maine, for example, now gives every student a laptop. Since they have already committed to that expense, e-textbooks, especially free ones as well as e-curriculum such as I describe become an increasingly viable and cost effective solution. Pay some people to write the software once and such work can be shared among schools everywhere, very much undermining the argument that this is some sort of financial extravagance. Given the support of higher education in this sort of enterprise, it can be much more beneficial than maintaining the status quo, which is, frankly, hiring under qualified people to teach large groups of students how to pass tests which don't do much towards actually teaching them useful skills and abilities in favor of easily testable metrics that perpetuate said status quo.
Let me know when you get back to reality from your "let's see students actually put together reagents in a computer simulation such that they achieve the desired result."
Yes, because providing very reasonable and doable simulations via computers is so out there we should just stick with our current, misguided programs. Our educational system is much as a method of sorting students as it is a valid attempt at educating. People who resist change given the current system, baffle me. I honestly don't understand the perspective that better funding for a broken model is somehow going to create real benefit.
Either that or please write to your local Legislator that you're willing to pay 60% taxes.
Hyperbole. I am willing to pay more in taxes for a better educational system, but computerizing libraries and moving to books whose copyrights are publicly owned by the schools as well as implementing more interactive programs can be quite cost effective in this day and age. A few smart implementors can disseminate good implementations widely at little or no additional cost, which is pilot programs into this is so important.
If eBook readers were allowed, what would prevent a student from carrying a library worth of books with them?
Why would any sensible society want to stop students from carrying a library full of books with them, even into tests? If your test is on memorizing facts that can be easily looked up in a library of books, then the test is crap. There are a few, very specific cases where specialists actually need data memorized for use cases where they won't have access (EMT for example) but for all the rest we should not consider rote memorization to be education. Tests should be on the ability to apply knowledge usefully in a field of study.
I'm all for modernizing the education system. We've moved past the technological phase where outdated memorization is particularly useful. Forget multiple choice tests on atomic weights, let's see students actually put together reagents in a computer simulation such that they achieve the desired result. Let's see students infer physical properties based upon limited chemical data. Lets see kids apply the scientific method correctly via virtual experiments to determine what a compound is.
By all means make the entire library available to every student in class, during tests, and throughout the rest of their lives. Then we can get on to the important business of learning how to apply knowledge and logical methods to actually do something more than memorize lists for the short period of time between a segment of class and the examination.
You made an action (hiring the men) with the direct intent to cause me harm.
Hiring people is just speaking to them. You could just as easily say I took an action by making a public speech about politics, therefore public speeches about politics aren't protected by free speech laws.
Are people really this obtuse? Threats, yelling "fire" in a theater, slander/libel, conspiracy to commit a felony, numerous RICO violations, false advertising, and fraud are all examples where just speaking can be illegal and is not protected by the first amendment. I truly don't see how people can claim that free speech is an unlimited right and once shown one of these examples I don't understand the mindset where people start making excuses and trying to figure out reasons why speech isn't speech in those cases instead of simply admitting they were wrong and going forward more educated.
Whether it's money or threats of implicit violence, that's not just speech.
Threats of violence are absolutely "just speech" right up until actual violence occurs. Some of the least revolutionary of hate speech laws are laws that make illegal threats and calls for violence against specific groups. By your (completely incorrect) argument those hate speech laws aren't regulating speech at all. I think you're just trying to redefine "speech" in a way to desperately defend your failed argument.
What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"?
So if I hire ten guys to go beat you with sticks and throw stones at your head you think I should be free of criminal liability? After all, I just gave them money and spoke to them, neither of which hurt you directly.
I think the part where you hired them with money ruins the rest of your attempted argument.
I see, so if they're part of my gang an pay me dues and I don't pay them, then it's okay? What if I just promise them money? What if I just convince them I will murder them and their families if they don't? That's just speech.
I think my point is perfectly valid. That point being, freedom of speech is not now and never has been an unlimited right. It is always restricted by compromises when it conflicts with other basic human rights. I'm not particularly in favor of hate speech laws, but I am in favor of a rational and informed discussion. After the 20th or 30th ignorant comment about free speech being unlimited, or that hate speech laws are anything but slightly shifting the balance of where we judge those compromises, I have to say something in the hopes that people will think and educate themselves.
What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"?
So if I hire ten guys to go beat you with sticks and throw stones at your head you think I should be free of criminal liability? After all, I just gave them money and spoke to them, neither of which hurt you directly.
Is anyone really surprised that anti-hatespeech laws violate the basic 'free speech' right? I mean, either a person is free to say what they want or not.
So I should be free from criminal liability because I'm exercising my free speech when I say, "Hey Joey, I need you to go whack this 'Aladrin' fella"? If I just speak and someone else acts I'm in the clear and not guilty of conspiracy to commit murder? Likewise I can create a product and tell everyone it is healthy when in reality I know it will slowly kill them? Since all I'm doing is speaking and they're the ones ingesting it I'm free from civil liabilities because I'm "free to say what I want"?
The limits of free speech have always been where they infringe upon other basic human rights. Free speech is not unlimited. Threatening speech, when direct or a direct call to commit violence has always been considered unprotected. Hate speech laws are about moving that to include threats against specific groups instead of individuals, and sometimes speech that may not be a direct threat but which the courts believe leads people to violent action against those groups.
I'm not saying I support hate speech laws in general or any specific hate speech laws. I'm very conservative on this issue. I just think we should be clear about what we're discussing and the idea that hate speech laws are wrong because free speech is an unlimited right is uninformed and clouds the discussion with misunderstanding.
Hate speech, especially published hate speech, serves no purpose other than to degrade, criminalize or deter a particular person, race, or gender.
Your hateful words with regard to hate speech serve no purpose other than to hurt and degrade people who speak hatefully. We need hate speech legislation to ban hateful speech so you can no longer say such things publicly and we won't have to worry your hateful speech will result in legislation that will ban hateful speech.
lol, wtf? defensive much?
I'm not being defensive at all. What I was doing was trying to get you to think logically and scientifically about the issue. scientist's answer to a problem is the application of the scientific method then belief in the most supported theory as the most likely truth until further experimentation changes what has the most support.
It is a logical, formal method of forming beliefs. So what I'm trying to do here here is help both you and I understand what belief you think is most likely true and by what method you formed that belief. Hence my question (which you did not answer) as to how you thought this trait appeared.
Attacking the prevailing theory is not enough to logically form a belief in something else. This is the flaw in creationists' logic. You can't attack one theory and then conclude that belief in the opposite of that theory is true. You have to find more logical support for an alternate theory, whether that is creation of homosexuality by magic or by genetic linkage to other hypothalmic benefits.
Fine, great, so SHOW ME THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE supporting your IDEA that kin selection is the actual mechanism for the continuance of homosexuality in animals.
Well, one would be:
Kin selection and male androphilia in Samoan fa'afafine Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 28, Issue 3, Pages 159-167 P. Vasey, D. Pocock, D. VanderLaan
But that is not a particularly good one since it only looks at one species and so cannot speak to the evolution so much as current, possible correlation.
Because until you collect the evidence and do the statistical analysis on the data for, eg., homosexuality in a particular species, your idea is just as good as any other.
That's a fallacy. You see a falsifiable and testable hypothesis is superior to an untestable hypothesis, even before any testing is done. In this case, however, quite a few studies have been done and kin selection is the most common method of amplifying reproductively negative traits making the the obvious front runner based upon other studies.
...and there ACTUALLY ARE SEVERAL other highly plausible theories for the evolution of homosexuality BTW...
Certainly there are and my point was not that none of the others can be true, but that "skepticism" about one theory is in itself useless unless you present data on an alternative theory. Skepticism by itself, is not a logical method of making decisions or forming beliefs.
Because it just so happens that Bobrow and Bailey DID look into the theory ...
Sorry, but that study has been thoroughly rejected by peer review because the methodology, like most studies of this kind, are looking at a single species in its current state which (since the genetic link to homosexuality seems to be cross species) does not inform us sufficiently about the origin on the genetic predisposition. If current gay men don't claim in surveys to give more money to their nieces then straight men, in our society, that doesn't really speak to whether or not they provided more defense and food and shelter over the course of evolution in all species that manifested the trait. To accurately test such a thing we'd need a controlled environment without cultural influences across multiple species.
To say that a study of men in our current society rules out kin selection as a mechanism for the evolution misunderstands both the experimental process and the relevance of the study you quote to the theory in question.