20-some years ago, I started my bachelor's degree at Ohio University. I ended up in Los Angeles working in the film & TV business as an editor where they really don't care if you have a degree or not.
Fast forward to now... Economy crash, writers' strike, production slow down... so I decide use that as an opportunity to return to college to finally finish a bachelor's degree in Visual Effects.
The classes are held in computer labs and because the systems are used for many different kinds of classes including web design and as generic open labs, they are connected to the internet.
There is nothing as annoying and distracting as someone sitting there working on their Farmville while the instructor is lecturing or while we are supposedly critiquing each others work. It leads to the instructor having to go over simple concepts multiple times due to students not paying attention which really pisses me off as it's wasting my time & money... Mommy & daddy aren't paying for my college classes... I am. We have a limited amount of time as it is... I want to get my money's worth by getting in as many concepts as possible--nott going over the same thing over and over and over because some idiot was tending to his crops.
Now chances are, these idiots who aren't paying attention in class would've found ways to not pay attention in class back in the pre-WiFi internet days, but for the most part, they would've been less distracting to other students who did want to pay attention. (They'd be doodling in a notebook or just sleeping.) If they were doing something that was distracting to other students, it would be much easier for an instructor to monitor and deal with... 'Take those headphones off,' 'stop talking back there,' etc.
These days, the instructor has a bunch of laptop lids pointed in their direction and the students could be doing anything from dutifully taking notes to running their virtual mob to reading Slashdot.
The point I'm eventually getting around to making is that these sorts of distractions that having full internet access in the classroom causes is unfair to the students who do want to pay attention.
I really don't give a shit if someone wants to waste their time and (parents') money by not paying attention in the classroom... but I get royally pissed when it wastes my time and my money.
Personally, if I was teaching I would have a policy in place where first time caught on the internet during a lecture or critique would get a warning, second time... auto fail.
User pays America Online a small fee (i.e. micropayment) for filtered access to online content. AOL users' online universe consists only of content provided by AOL and its exclusive partners. Some more 'sophisticated' AOL users hear tale of this thing called 'USENET' and start posting there, screwing it up for the the perviously existing user base.
AOL eventually becomes big enough to buy out a major media conglomerate, Time-Warner.
2013
'Someone' builds a network that revolutionizes the way money is made by publishers and calls it Internet Online. This new company, IOL is backed by a major media conglomerate (News Corp. perhaps?). Major content providers partner with IOL making their articles and media exclusively available through IOL.
The average internet user doesn't want to pay multiple micropayment bills to pay for content so they choose one. Because of the size of IOL's size and power (being backed by News Corp perhaps?) they own the majority of online content so the user chooses IOL.
User pays Internet Online a micropayment (i.e. small fee) for filtered access to online content. IOL users' online universe consists only of content provided by IOL and its exclusive partners. Some more 'sophisticated' IOL users hear tale of this thing called 'USENET' and start posting there, screwing it up for the previously existing user base.
Tongue in cheek, yes, but that's how it would work with an overseeing network.
The thing to remember too is that when money's involved, business doesn't care if it's good for the internet as a whole. It's all about profit.
I'll see the micropayment model as a good thing only when someone can explain to me how it will work in a way that doesn't end up with AOL version 2.
First off, the $.05 is based off of what the parent comment stated they would pay as a reasonable cost per article.
Secondly... how does a micropayment infrastructure that can share revenue across sites get in place? Sounds like you need a large parent company to set that up.
Can anybody sign up for that? If not, who decides who can and cannot sign up for it? What about censorship? What if the company that controls the revenue doesn't like what I write?
What about smaller players? Don't they deserve a share of the revenue as well?
What if the revenue sharing is controlled by a company that acts as PayPal does and freezes accounts for marginal reasons?
Doesn't a micropayment infrastructure across many sites set up sort of a new version of AOL where consumer X sets up payment with internet content provider Y with the majority of their internet experience filtered through that very company that's providing the micropayment infrastructure they are subscribed to?
Please elaborate in detail how such a micropayment system would work.
Just stating 'you wouldn't have to pay very much' doesn't cut it.
The issue I have with the concept of many content providers going to a 'micropayment' subscription is that for the user, eventually, all the micropayments for the stuff they want to read ends up being one big MACROpayment.
I've got enough monthly payments to deal with between car payments, car insurance, rent, phone bill, internet, and so forth. I don't want to and am not going to add a bunch of $.99 micropayments on top of everything else.
$.05 an article? Micropayment? How many articles have you read on the internet today? How many this month? Let's see... in the past hour or so I read...
$.05 1-Article MMO-Champion.com$.10 2-Articles WoW.com$.10 2-Articles Slashdot.org$.10 2-Articles ArsTechnica.com$.10 2-Articles Cracked.com$.05 1-Article NYTimes.com$.05 1-Article NewsoftheWeird.com
Ok... that works out to $.55 in an hour. Let's say 3 hours on the internet per day or 21 hours per week... $11.55 a week multiplied by 4 to get per month... $46.20... multiplied by 12 for the yearly cost... $554.40. $554.40 a year on micropayments!!!
So... tell me again... are you willing to make micropayments for every article you read on the internet?
Also, if many websites go to a micropayment model users will get sick of having to enter their credit card or paypal account every time they want to read something. Someone like Rupert Murdoch will come along and offer a whole bunch of this content for one payment instead of a ton of little payments.
It'll be a reintroduction to an AOL type experience where everything the average user would look at would be through the filter of one giant corporation.
Yep... Micropayments is exactly where the big corporations would like us to go.
I agree... I don't have a problem with web page ads in general.
It's the damn ads that
Pop up a graphic that covers most of the screen when you accidentally mouse over them
Little floaty windows that float over the content you're trying to look at until you close them
An overabundance of inline text-linked ads that also float something when you mouse over them
Ads that automatically start playing sound.
Seizure inducing blinky ads
Ads that disguise themselves as error messages
Ad servers that slow down the entire page load time
It seems that some webmasters/advertisers have gotten it into their heads that the more annoying they make their ads, the more likely we are to buy their product. In actuality, all they are doing is causing users to close the window and move on to someone else's less annoying site. If one of their stinking ads gets in the way and I accidentally click it, I don't look at the ad... I immediately close the page it opens in annoyance.
Stop trying to annoy the hell out of your readers with terrible ads and they'll be more likely to stop using ad blockers or at least whitelist your site.
I had a shared hosting account with them. One day, my domains stopped working (server not found errors) so I called their 'tech support' line which is apparently in the Philippines. I had to wait about an hour to actually talk to someone.
When I finally got someone on the line, he read through his tech support script and then told me that the server was working. When I asked him if he actually checked that the server was working he told me he had not but there were no tickets from the engineers that any servers were down. 'Well,' I said, 'my server seems to be down.' He then repeated what he just said.
I asked to be bumped up to the next tier of support. After hemming and hawing for a few, he put me on hold to bump me up to the next level. After about a half hour, the same guy got back on the line and started the whole script all over again.
Eventually, after about 2 1/2 hours, I got bumped up to the next level of 'support' to be told that the 'engineers were aware of the problem and were working on it.' I asked for an ETA and the guy just kept repeating the same thing.
About 36 hours later, the server finally came back up. 12 hours later the server goes back down. Call tech support, repeat the same experience as before with some guy in the Philippines.
Two days later, the server comes back up. 8 hours later the server is down.
This went on for about two weeks with them refusing to acknowledge there was a problem and refusing to offer any sort of refund or credit to the account for the incredible amount of downtime.
Now, I'll admit up until that time, I hadn't had much of a problem with 1 and 1 as, like you, my hosting needs aren't very demanding but when the service went down, it went really down and trying to rectify it was a tremendous pain in the butt.
YMMV, but that was my experience with them and it was far too painful to stay with them. Dreamhost has been good for me thus far and I've been really happy that their tech support's first language is English.;-)
I've had great luck with Dreamhost after I switched to them from 1 and 1 (god they sucked)
Dreamhost is based in Southern California and even better, their tech support is based in Southern California. They're also an employee owned company.
They offer a pretty wide range of services from shared hosting on up to your own servers. Their tech support is fantastic... once when I had a problem with my shared hosting account, their tech support person emailed me back about the problem BEFORE I received the automated "someone from tech support will get back to you as soon as possible" email. (the automated email came about 15 minutes after I submitted the ticket.)
Personally, I think the individuals involved with this policy should be charged with attempting to acquire child pornography. After all, the laptops in question could easily have been in the child's room where they would absolutely have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It's no different than if the teacher/administrator had drilled a peephole in that child's room and had anytime access to watch them change their clothes.
Also, if I were a parent, I would be unbelievably angry if school faculty came bursting into my home uninvited. This is no different.
School faculty only has a right to deal with a student's behavior when they are on school grounds or attending school functions.
Personally, I hope criminal charges are filed against the school administration that did this.
Personally, I contend that it's wrong to look at the iPad as a computer. That's not the intention of the product. It is an appliance much as a washing machine, coffee maker, or toaster. It's designed to do some specific things and do it well just as the previously mentioned examples hopefully do their respective functions well.
An appliance such as a coffee maker isn't designed to be hacked into. It's designed to be functional and simple for the average consumer to use. This is what the iPad is.
OS X will continue for its market base, the user who needs the complexity of a full operating system and the iPad is perfect for your mom or grandmother to finally get on the internet, email, download books, etc. without needing a part-time geek to hand hold them through the process each time.
(as an aside to that, my 90 year old grandmother bought a Kindle and really likes it, but needs help getting through the menu system anytime she wants to buy the next book.)
Not everyone wants to fiddle with every little setting in an OS. I would say a majority just want to pick up the device and the device works. This is the primary reason the iPhone has done so well and is likely why the iPad will do really well.
I really don't see how anyone in their right mind could honestly expect that Psystar was going to survive aggressively going up against Apple such as they did. Be glad you got the amount of use that you did out of the pay version of Rebel EFI.
IIRC, RebelEFI is based on a open source EFI... can't remember the name, but I'm sure a fellow slashdotter will mention it.
Unfortunately, since most consumer items are built to be replaced instead of fixed, the overall service industry will fail eventually as well. So... we'll all just have to be content with serving each other Fatburgers to each other.
When the broadband internet is treated like a utility and everyone, including deep rural dwellers has relatively easy access to it then government can take post their 'public' notices online.
As it stands right now a good percentage of the population still do not have reasonable access to the internet or are not tech savvy enough to own a computer (i.e. many of the elderly). They should not be punished for their lack of internet access by removing public government notices from newspapers which are still easily accessible by anyone.
I mean, it would be a major PITA for me to daily carry....
1. Umbrella
2. Backpack (work papers, books)
3. Laptop (work)
4. Gym bag
5. Lunch (I bring food for breakfast, lunch and snack before gym, so this is a very full grocery bag daily)
And incidentals if need be. So, I'd have to lug this all daily..plus some kind of change of clothes?? I mean...down here in NOLA, as I've posted before...if it doesn't drop you off VERY close to your jobsite...during the summer (which is basically May through early Nov) you will be unprofessionally sweat soaked on a 5 minute walk, or you will be drenched by rains, and with street flooding that happens on very rainy days...even if you have an umbrella...you might be wading through a foot of water in places...etc.
Unless you happen to be a really fat lazy bastard, carrying 1-5 shouldn't be that big a deal. Learn to carry the right bag for the right job and only take what you really need.
I live in Los Angeles, but worked in London last year and London was great! I lived in North London in an area called Muswell Hill. There was a bus every 5-10 minutes and you could plan your route so you never had to walk much more than 5 minutes from where the bus dropped you off. The tube was also great... it blankets the city with plenty of stops. Carrying my typical load of work crap + an umbrella was never an issue.
Los Angeles on the other hand, sucks for public transportation. Many bus lines are once an hour if you're lucky enough that they show up. If you're sitting on the bench that looks like the bus stop next to the bus stop sign when the bus approaches, they may not even stop. It seems that the Metro's policy is that you have to *actually* standing underneath the bus stop sign to assure the bus stops. (I actually had a very long, terse conversation with a Metro supervisor on the phone after a bus zipped by my friend who was waiting for the bus while he and I were talking.)
I won't even go into how I can't figure how people go grocery or other shopping with only public transit. How do you carry all that stuff around with you on a bus, train and changing buses and trains along the way. I do my shopping on Sat or Sunday...I usually hit 2-3 stores and maybe Sam's Club to get the best deals, and some things in bulk. I have to make about 2-4 trips to my car when I get home to unload all the stuff. How do you carry that much with no car?
I think that the primary idea of public transportation would be to remove much of the energy and congestion costs of everyone driving their own car to work every day, not necessarily to completely eliminate the need for a car. That said, without a car you could handle it two ways...
In London, there were lots of little stores on the way to & from work so I would just pick up things as I needed them. It practically adds no time to your commute as you can zip in & out of the stores in 2 seconds and you don't have to make a special trip to get to them... they're on the way.
If you need to grab a big load of stuff you could either take a cab or find a friend who had a car. Also, you could take a friend with you on the bus to help you.
If public transportation were done here in the U.S. as it is in Europe or NYC, you'd find public transpo much more convenient than driving to & from work every day. However, as a previous poster said, many of the public transportation companies look at the 'profit margin' of routes rather than as public transportation being a service.
If you try to travel via bus at night here in Los Angeles, you may end up with travel times of 3-4 hours to get from point A to point B as the posted bus times are unreliable and often the buses run only once an hour if at all.
I'm lucky that I only ahve about a 10 min. drive to work...if I were to have to do hours on public transportation, well, hell...I'm out on weekdays from 8:30 or so till
Well, yes... since that data center is, in fact, connected to all other data centers, then logically speaking, all other data centers are also to blame. In order to fully investigate properly, surely the FBI must seize the servers from all other data centers as well!
With the speed that law enforcement works at, it'll be months, if not years before those innocent companies get their equipment back... if they get it back at all.
You see, in many places, laws were passed that allowed law enforcement agencies to keep property that is *suspected* to have been used in a crime. For example, the police think you've been dealing drugs out of your car. You go to court and are proven innocent (you don't even necessarily have to be charged witha crime!) Cops get to keep your car anyway because they *suspect* it was used in a criminal activity. Great system don't you think?
The state's asset seizure law doesn't require that law enforcement agencies file criminal charges in civil forfeiture cases. It requires only a preponderance of evidence that the property was used in the commission of certain crimes, such as drug crimes, or bought with proceeds of those crimes.
That's a lesser burden than is required in a criminal case. And it allows police departments and prosecutors to divvy up what they get from such seizures - what critics say is a built-in incentive for unscrupulous, underfinanced law enforcement agencies to illegally strip motorists of their property.
I agree as well. Because the link was from the Washington Post and not Billy Bob's Technology Barn, I was expecting they'd at least have the decency to do some 'actual' reporting rather than just adding to the pile of lame, bogus news stories that come out today.
What's next from a 'mainstream' news source?
President Obama Assassinated . . . . .
April fools, lulz, jes kiddin'
pystar, any relation I wonder to starmax ? (the last Mac clone) Not much at all... Starmax was a Motorola product--the people who made the Mac processors up until the Intel switch.
"Could we be overthrown by an evil dictator soon?"
I wonder about that also. Will those who are in control of the U.S. government allow elections this time in November? Or will there be some "threat" that those in power say requires them to continue in power? Not to get all "Conspiracy Theory," but I kind of wonder if this has been in the works since the time Prescott Bush, father of George H. W. Bush plotted with other business leaders to overthrow the government of FDR. "41," I believe, has been quoted as admiring the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. It wouldn't be all that surprising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
Bobby Ray Earle of Wichita unveiled a new automated vehicle fueling system today.
"It's a very sophisticated system," said Earle. "Our customers will be very happy not to have to pump their own gas."
When a car pulls up, the system immediately registers the make and model of the car and locates the fuel cap using two visual sensors. The system then extends its sensory touch system to open the flap, unscrew the cap, and direct the fuel nozzle towards the tank opening.
The cost for the fueling system is minimal. It is expected to price for no more than $5 per hour.
"If only it didn't need a bathroom break every few hours," said Earle. "Other than that, my system works flawlessly."
I find their use of the word 'eliminated' a bit overly dramatic. Dissolved maybe, but eliminated? It's not like they've all been taken to the alley behind the studio, shot in the head and then dumped in the river. Ah, you've never worked in Hollywood have you? It's exactly like that.
Slashdot readers have had the ability to repel instead of attract for years!
Thank God that wouldn't happen in the US
on
China Censoring Flickr
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Censorship under the guise of protecting our children or national security. Thank god that stuff only happens in China and not here in the United States...
Oh... er...
...nevermind
Generally, a newspaper or journalist wouldn't just giddily publish something like this without a little old-fashioned fact checking. It's idiotic to publish this with information from only a single source.
Oh, but wait... this is Web 2.0 isn't it... screw the facts... gimme page hits.
Well, let's see... jail time for copyright infringement. Next on the list... The return of debtor's prison! (I bet "they" really would've liked to get that attached to the "reformed" bankruptcy laws. Let's make things easier for corporations, harder for individuals.)
Slashdot Mirror
20-some years ago, I started my bachelor's degree at Ohio University. I ended up in Los Angeles working in the film & TV business as an editor where they really don't care if you have a degree or not.
Fast forward to now... Economy crash, writers' strike, production slow down... so I decide use that as an opportunity to return to college to finally finish a bachelor's degree in Visual Effects.
The classes are held in computer labs and because the systems are used for many different kinds of classes including web design and as generic open labs, they are connected to the internet.
There is nothing as annoying and distracting as someone sitting there working on their Farmville while the instructor is lecturing or while we are supposedly critiquing each others work. It leads to the instructor having to go over simple concepts multiple times due to students not paying attention which really pisses me off as it's wasting my time & money... Mommy & daddy aren't paying for my college classes... I am. We have a limited amount of time as it is... I want to get my money's worth by getting in as many concepts as possible--nott going over the same thing over and over and over because some idiot was tending to his crops.
Now chances are, these idiots who aren't paying attention in class would've found ways to not pay attention in class back in the pre-WiFi internet days, but for the most part, they would've been less distracting to other students who did want to pay attention. (They'd be doodling in a notebook or just sleeping.) If they were doing something that was distracting to other students, it would be much easier for an instructor to monitor and deal with... 'Take those headphones off,' 'stop talking back there,' etc.
These days, the instructor has a bunch of laptop lids pointed in their direction and the students could be doing anything from dutifully taking notes to running their virtual mob to reading Slashdot.
The point I'm eventually getting around to making is that these sorts of distractions that having full internet access in the classroom causes is unfair to the students who do want to pay attention.
I really don't give a shit if someone wants to waste their time and (parents') money by not paying attention in the classroom... but I get royally pissed when it wastes my time and my money.
Personally, if I was teaching I would have a policy in place where first time caught on the internet during a lecture or critique would get a warning, second time... auto fail.
But... I digress...
1993
User pays America Online a small fee (i.e. micropayment) for filtered access to online content. AOL users' online universe consists only of content provided by AOL and its exclusive partners. Some more 'sophisticated' AOL users hear tale of this thing called 'USENET' and start posting there, screwing it up for the the perviously existing user base.
AOL eventually becomes big enough to buy out a major media conglomerate, Time-Warner.
2013
'Someone' builds a network that revolutionizes the way money is made by publishers and calls it Internet Online. This new company, IOL is backed by a major media conglomerate (News Corp. perhaps?). Major content providers partner with IOL making their articles and media exclusively available through IOL.
The average internet user doesn't want to pay multiple micropayment bills to pay for content so they choose one. Because of the size of IOL's size and power (being backed by News Corp perhaps?) they own the majority of online content so the user chooses IOL.
User pays Internet Online a micropayment (i.e. small fee) for filtered access to online content. IOL users' online universe consists only of content provided by IOL and its exclusive partners. Some more 'sophisticated' IOL users hear tale of this thing called 'USENET' and start posting there, screwing it up for the previously existing user base.
Tongue in cheek, yes, but that's how it would work with an overseeing network.
The thing to remember too is that when money's involved, business doesn't care if it's good for the internet as a whole. It's all about profit.
I'll see the micropayment model as a good thing only when someone can explain to me how it will work in a way that doesn't end up with AOL version 2.
First off, the $.05 is based off of what the parent comment stated they would pay as a reasonable cost per article.
Secondly... how does a micropayment infrastructure that can share revenue across sites get in place? Sounds like you need a large parent company to set that up.
Can anybody sign up for that? If not, who decides who can and cannot sign up for it? What about censorship? What if the company that controls the revenue doesn't like what I write?
What about smaller players? Don't they deserve a share of the revenue as well?
What if the revenue sharing is controlled by a company that acts as PayPal does and freezes accounts for marginal reasons?
Doesn't a micropayment infrastructure across many sites set up sort of a new version of AOL where consumer X sets up payment with internet content provider Y with the majority of their internet experience filtered through that very company that's providing the micropayment infrastructure they are subscribed to?
Please elaborate in detail how such a micropayment system would work.
Just stating 'you wouldn't have to pay very much' doesn't cut it.
I've got enough monthly payments to deal with between car payments, car insurance, rent, phone bill, internet, and so forth. I don't want to and am not going to add a bunch of $.99 micropayments on top of everything else.
$.05 an article? Micropayment? How many articles have you read on the internet today? How many this month? Let's see... in the past hour or so I read... $.05 1-Article MMO-Champion.com $.10 2-Articles WoW.com $.10 2-Articles Slashdot.org $.10 2-Articles ArsTechnica.com $.10 2-Articles Cracked.com $.05 1-Article NYTimes.com $.05 1-Article NewsoftheWeird.com
Ok... that works out to $.55 in an hour. Let's say 3 hours on the internet per day or 21 hours per week... $11.55 a week multiplied by 4 to get per month... $46.20... multiplied by 12 for the yearly cost... $554.40. $554.40 a year on micropayments!!!
So... tell me again... are you willing to make micropayments for every article you read on the internet?
Also, if many websites go to a micropayment model users will get sick of having to enter their credit card or paypal account every time they want to read something. Someone like Rupert Murdoch will come along and offer a whole bunch of this content for one payment instead of a ton of little payments.
It'll be a reintroduction to an AOL type experience where everything the average user would look at would be through the filter of one giant corporation.
Yep... Micropayments is exactly where the big corporations would like us to go.
It's the damn ads that
It seems that some webmasters/advertisers have gotten it into their heads that the more annoying they make their ads, the more likely we are to buy their product. In actuality, all they are doing is causing users to close the window and move on to someone else's less annoying site. If one of their stinking ads gets in the way and I accidentally click it, I don't look at the ad... I immediately close the page it opens in annoyance.
Stop trying to annoy the hell out of your readers with terrible ads and they'll be more likely to stop using ad blockers or at least whitelist your site.
I had a shared hosting account with them. One day, my domains stopped working (server not found errors) so I called their 'tech support' line which is apparently in the Philippines. I had to wait about an hour to actually talk to someone.
;-)
When I finally got someone on the line, he read through his tech support script and then told me that the server was working. When I asked him if he actually checked that the server was working he told me he had not but there were no tickets from the engineers that any servers were down. 'Well,' I said, 'my server seems to be down.' He then repeated what he just said.
I asked to be bumped up to the next tier of support. After hemming and hawing for a few, he put me on hold to bump me up to the next level. After about a half hour, the same guy got back on the line and started the whole script all over again.
Eventually, after about 2 1/2 hours, I got bumped up to the next level of 'support' to be told that the 'engineers were aware of the problem and were working on it.' I asked for an ETA and the guy just kept repeating the same thing.
About 36 hours later, the server finally came back up. 12 hours later the server goes back down. Call tech support, repeat the same experience as before with some guy in the Philippines.
Two days later, the server comes back up. 8 hours later the server is down.
This went on for about two weeks with them refusing to acknowledge there was a problem and refusing to offer any sort of refund or credit to the account for the incredible amount of downtime.
Now, I'll admit up until that time, I hadn't had much of a problem with 1 and 1 as, like you, my hosting needs aren't very demanding but when the service went down, it went really down and trying to rectify it was a tremendous pain in the butt.
YMMV, but that was my experience with them and it was far too painful to stay with them. Dreamhost has been good for me thus far and I've been really happy that their tech support's first language is English.
I've had great luck with Dreamhost after I switched to them from 1 and 1 (god they sucked)
Dreamhost is based in Southern California and even better, their tech support is based in Southern California. They're also an employee owned company.
They offer a pretty wide range of services from shared hosting on up to your own servers. Their tech support is fantastic... once when I had a problem with my shared hosting account, their tech support person emailed me back about the problem BEFORE I received the automated "someone from tech support will get back to you as soon as possible" email. (the automated email came about 15 minutes after I submitted the ticket.)
Personally, I think the individuals involved with this policy should be charged with attempting to acquire child pornography. After all, the laptops in question could easily have been in the child's room where they would absolutely have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It's no different than if the teacher/administrator had drilled a peephole in that child's room and had anytime access to watch them change their clothes.
Also, if I were a parent, I would be unbelievably angry if school faculty came bursting into my home uninvited. This is no different.
School faculty only has a right to deal with a student's behavior when they are on school grounds or attending school functions.
Personally, I hope criminal charges are filed against the school administration that did this.
Personally, I contend that it's wrong to look at the iPad as a computer. That's not the intention of the product. It is an appliance much as a washing machine, coffee maker, or toaster. It's designed to do some specific things and do it well just as the previously mentioned examples hopefully do their respective functions well.
An appliance such as a coffee maker isn't designed to be hacked into. It's designed to be functional and simple for the average consumer to use. This is what the iPad is.
OS X will continue for its market base, the user who needs the complexity of a full operating system and the iPad is perfect for your mom or grandmother to finally get on the internet, email, download books, etc. without needing a part-time geek to hand hold them through the process each time.
(as an aside to that, my 90 year old grandmother bought a Kindle and really likes it, but needs help getting through the menu system anytime she wants to buy the next book.)
Not everyone wants to fiddle with every little setting in an OS. I would say a majority just want to pick up the device and the device works. This is the primary reason the iPhone has done so well and is likely why the iPad will do really well.
I really don't see how anyone in their right mind could honestly expect that Psystar was going to survive aggressively going up against Apple such as they did. Be glad you got the amount of use that you did out of the pay version of Rebel EFI. IIRC, RebelEFI is based on a open source EFI... can't remember the name, but I'm sure a fellow slashdotter will mention it.
As do I!
Unfortunately, since most consumer items are built to be replaced instead of fixed, the overall service industry will fail eventually as well. So... we'll all just have to be content with serving each other Fatburgers to each other.
When the broadband internet is treated like a utility and everyone, including deep rural dwellers has relatively easy access to it then government can take post their 'public' notices online.
As it stands right now a good percentage of the population still do not have reasonable access to the internet or are not tech savvy enough to own a computer (i.e. many of the elderly). They should not be punished for their lack of internet access by removing public government notices from newspapers which are still easily accessible by anyone.
I mean, it would be a major PITA for me to daily carry....
1. Umbrella
2. Backpack (work papers, books)
3. Laptop (work)
4. Gym bag
5. Lunch (I bring food for breakfast, lunch and snack before gym, so this is a very full grocery bag daily)
And incidentals if need be. So, I'd have to lug this all daily..plus some kind of change of clothes?? I mean...down here in NOLA, as I've posted before...if it doesn't drop you off VERY close to your jobsite...during the summer (which is basically May through early Nov) you will be unprofessionally sweat soaked on a 5 minute walk, or you will be drenched by rains, and with street flooding that happens on very rainy days...even if you have an umbrella...you might be wading through a foot of water in places...etc.
Unless you happen to be a really fat lazy bastard, carrying 1-5 shouldn't be that big a deal. Learn to carry the right bag for the right job and only take what you really need.
I live in Los Angeles, but worked in London last year and London was great! I lived in North London in an area called Muswell Hill. There was a bus every 5-10 minutes and you could plan your route so you never had to walk much more than 5 minutes from where the bus dropped you off. The tube was also great... it blankets the city with plenty of stops. Carrying my typical load of work crap + an umbrella was never an issue.
Los Angeles on the other hand, sucks for public transportation. Many bus lines are once an hour if you're lucky enough that they show up. If you're sitting on the bench that looks like the bus stop next to the bus stop sign when the bus approaches, they may not even stop. It seems that the Metro's policy is that you have to *actually* standing underneath the bus stop sign to assure the bus stops. (I actually had a very long, terse conversation with a Metro supervisor on the phone after a bus zipped by my friend who was waiting for the bus while he and I were talking.)
I won't even go into how I can't figure how people go grocery or other shopping with only public transit. How do you carry all that stuff around with you on a bus, train and changing buses and trains along the way. I do my shopping on Sat or Sunday...I usually hit 2-3 stores and maybe Sam's Club to get the best deals, and some things in bulk. I have to make about 2-4 trips to my car when I get home to unload all the stuff. How do you carry that much with no car?
I think that the primary idea of public transportation would be to remove much of the energy and congestion costs of everyone driving their own car to work every day, not necessarily to completely eliminate the need for a car. That said, without a car you could handle it two ways...
In London, there were lots of little stores on the way to & from work so I would just pick up things as I needed them. It practically adds no time to your commute as you can zip in & out of the stores in 2 seconds and you don't have to make a special trip to get to them... they're on the way.
If you need to grab a big load of stuff you could either take a cab or find a friend who had a car. Also, you could take a friend with you on the bus to help you.
If public transportation were done here in the U.S. as it is in Europe or NYC, you'd find public transpo much more convenient than driving to & from work every day. However, as a previous poster said, many of the public transportation companies look at the 'profit margin' of routes rather than as public transportation being a service.
If you try to travel via bus at night here in Los Angeles, you may end up with travel times of 3-4 hours to get from point A to point B as the posted bus times are unreliable and often the buses run only once an hour if at all.
I'm lucky that I only ahve about a 10 min. drive to work...if I were to have to do hours on public transportation, well, hell...I'm out on weekdays from 8:30 or so till
Well, yes... since that data center is, in fact, connected to all other data centers, then logically speaking, all other data centers are also to blame. In order to fully investigate properly, surely the FBI must seize the servers from all other data centers as well!
With the speed that law enforcement works at, it'll be months, if not years before those innocent companies get their equipment back... if they get it back at all.
You see, in many places, laws were passed that allowed law enforcement agencies to keep property that is *suspected* to have been used in a crime. For example, the police think you've been dealing drugs out of your car. You go to court and are proven innocent (you don't even necessarily have to be charged witha crime!) Cops get to keep your car anyway because they *suspect* it was used in a criminal activity. Great system don't you think?
See this article for one example... there are many others... Property seizures seen as piracy
I agree as well. Because the link was from the Washington Post and not Billy Bob's Technology Barn, I was expecting they'd at least have the decency to do some 'actual' reporting rather than just adding to the pile of lame, bogus news stories that come out today.
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What's next from a 'mainstream' news source?
President Obama Assassinated
April fools, lulz, jes kiddin'
Please 'mainstream' news... report the *NEWS*
Bobby Ray Earle of Wichita unveiled a new automated vehicle fueling system today.
"It's a very sophisticated system," said Earle. "Our customers will be very happy not to have to pump their own gas."
When a car pulls up, the system immediately registers the make and model of the car and locates the fuel cap using two visual sensors. The system then extends its sensory touch system to open the flap, unscrew the cap, and direct the fuel nozzle towards the tank opening.
The cost for the fueling system is minimal. It is expected to price for no more than $5 per hour.
"If only it didn't need a bathroom break every few hours," said Earle. "Other than that, my system works flawlessly."
Slashdot readers have had the ability to repel instead of attract for years!
Censorship under the guise of protecting our children or national security. Thank god that stuff only happens in China and not here in the United States...
...nevermind
Oh... er...
Generally, a newspaper or journalist wouldn't just giddily publish something like this without a little old-fashioned fact checking. It's idiotic to publish this with information from only a single source. Oh, but wait... this is Web 2.0 isn't it... screw the facts... gimme page hits.
Well, let's see... jail time for copyright infringement. Next on the list... The return of debtor's prison! (I bet "they" really would've liked to get that attached to the "reformed" bankruptcy laws. Let's make things easier for corporations, harder for individuals.)