So? A normal, well adjusted person will immediately disregard such a statement to be false. The fact that the suicide victim was not a normal well adjusted person is not the fault of Lori Drew.
Depression is a disease. It is not the "fault" of any one person or circumstance. Blaming Lori Drew for the victim's depression would be like blaming McDonald's for heart attacks caused by fatty foods. Sure, McDonald's bears some responsibility for serving such fare, and likewise, Lori Drew bears some responsibility for her words. But does the level of responsibility rise to a criminal level? I don't think so. Just like one has the ability to choose what one eats, one also has the ability to choose what words one listens to. The fact that the victim chose to listen to her is no fault of Lori Drew's.
What measures are being taken to ensure that the privacy of others who communicate with these students isn't being compromised? Are they having the students tell everyone they communicate with, "Hey, I'm in this data gathering study, so everything you send to my phone is going to be collected for study?"
If they're not doing the above, how are the students any different from the informants employed by the East German STASI?
The other issue, as other posters above have pointed out, is reciprocity. In this study the researchers are taking data about the student's "private" lives, but are not giving back any data about themselves. This is quite unlike their "village" analogy, where, if you find out some private data about me, I have an opportunity to find out private data about you.
Well, it does get used millions of times during those two weeks. I'd say that there would be a fair amount of wear and tear, given the number of visitors.
As far as the first concern goes, ADS-B isn't really that much of a departure from the current scheme of things. Currently air traffic controllers usually rely on each plane having a transponder that broadcasts its ID. This transmission is then picked up by the radar systems and the plane's altitude/position is then plotted on the ATC's scope. ADS-B, as I understand it, allows the plane to append its GPS position to its transponder broadcast, allowing the air traffic system to get a more accurate read on the plane's position.
In either case, if the transmitter were turned off, the ATC would have a very difficult time finding the plane. As an example, on September 11, the air traffic controllers could not locate Flight 93 on their traces until after it had already crashed, since the terrorists turned off the plane's transponder.
The problem with that strategy is that Google is also big enough to be theoretically investigated for anti-trust issues, especially with regards to their acquisition of DoubleClick. If Google threatens Microsoft with anti-trust allegations, Microsoft could reasonably do the same in return.
Do you really think that people will stick with an ISP that has slowed-down access to Google?
Do you really think that most people in the United States have much of a choice as to what ISP they have? In many (most?) places, it comes down to a choice between $PHONE_COMPANY DSL and $CABLE_COMPANY cable internet. In a significant number of places (like, for example, my house) even that choice isn't there. I'm (still!) too far away from the CO to get more than 768kbps DSL from the phone company, so my only choice is Comcast.
This is true. The banking and financial industry is quite heavily regulated, when compared with the technology industry. However, that doesn't mean that the regulations in either case are adequate. After all, many of the derivatives implicated in the current financial crisis were specifically created to help banks avoid their minimum capital requirements in the pursuit of greater profit.
The banks were not forced to provide such loans. The Community Reinvestment Act can only be blamed for a very tiny percentage of the subprime loan market. What really sparked the boom was the realization on the part of banks and other mortgage originators that very few buyers of mortgage securities actually scrutinized the mortgages that are in the tranches. As long as the default rate stayed underneath the modeled default rate, no one cared that the fundamentals were unsound.
As for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, what happened was that they were trying to compete with other subprime lenders and therefore relaxed their own lending requirements. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not pull private industry into this mess; rather, it was quite the opposite.
Two words: false alarms. I've certainly had issues with people getting false alarms from anti-virus for legitimate (virus free) programs. This especially seems to be an issue with system utilities, like anti-spyware and the like. I also used to have issues with A/V flagging ethereal as a virus (probably because of its network activity).
You can run XP on a new computer because you're tech-savvy enough to know how to wipe the install and reinstall a different OS. But does that describe the average user? I don't think so. After all, we're dealing with a population where nearly 70% need help to get things working right in the first place. For those people, wiping Vista and reinstalling with XP is the psychological equivalent of climbing a mountain. It may be difficult and rewarding, but its much easier to stay on the plains and whine about how much things suck.
Fair point. I do know of a lot of people who haven't bothered running anti-virus in years, and have never been infected because they simply use safe computing practices (like staying diligent with patches, avoiding warez and other suspicious executables, etc.). However, I somehow doubt that this 'Morro' will be targeted towards that demographic.
Not necessarily. As I recall, Apple ran OS 9 apps in a sandboxed/emulated environment after they made the switch to OSX (but before they made the switch to Intel chips), and there wasn't too much complaining.
Of course, I'm not really attuned to the Mac end of this business, so I might just be misinformed.
but a whole lot of them will sit up and take notice if their antivirus pops up and warns them away.
You'd think so, but that's simply not the case. In my time as a PC tech. I saw all too many PCs where the user had clicked on something, seen repeated antivirus/anti-spyware warnings and still continued with the installation. Basically, it comes down to an issue of trust. People distrust their antivirus as much as they distrust the random crapware they download from the Internet. So, when the antivirus pops up and tells them, "Hey, this software is going to bring along a virus," they feel safe in ignoring it, since they've seen all too many false alarms for other things (like tracking cookies).
Really? I've checked my oil and changed flat tires, but I learned both of those things by reading the owners manual for my car, not from the driver's education classes that I was required to take to get my license.
Depends on the context, of course. Yes, if you have very little experience with computers, I can understand if you don't immediately get how to copy files. On the other hand, I see people my age (22-ish) who have trouble with the very same things. These are people who have grown up with technology and computers, yet never really bothered to learn how to do even the basics to accomplish their tasks. There's really no excuse for those people.
Its true that Linux does a lot of things differently than Windows. Its also true that a modern Linux interfaces (e.g. KDE, Gnome, etc.) are doing a better job of hiding that sort of stuff.
What are the two most common uses of personal computers these days? Browsing the internet and running productivity applications. As long as you provide those two things, lots of people won't care that Linux is different - they can still do what they need to do.
Besides, its becoming more and more apparent that Microsoft may actually be driving away consumers in their attempt to make their interfaces more "elegant" (i.e. more Apple-like). I've heard numerous people tell me that the new Office 2007 interface is horrible, and that they actually like the OpenOffice.org interface because it continues the UI tradition of Word 2003.
That one time you got drunk and went off on some insane rant 5 years ago WILL come back to haunt you no matter how many other positive things there are.
I'm not sure about that. With the increasing omnipresence of search engines, you're going to see everybody's drunk insane rant posted and accessible online. If any prospective employer held that sort of thing against me, I doubt that I'd accept the job. Also, there are consequences to not having information about yourself online. After all, if I'm an employer and I don't see any work or any references to you online, I might wonder what you have to hide.
To be fair, you may learn through imitating another, its not right for you to profit by such work. To take an example from another art form - I may learn how to paint by copying an established painter, but that doesn't mean that I can create a painting in substantially the same style and profit from it.
If they put a GPL engine into IE, they would have to GPL IE, and that isn't happening.
Right, but as I understand it, there aren't a whole lot of pure GPL rendering engines out there. Webkit (which Safari and Chrome use) is LGPL, while Gecko is licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Both of these licenses are considerably more permissive than the GPL. There's nothing preventing Microsoft from doing what Apple did, namely wrapping Webkit with their own custom GUI code and passing it off as "Internet Explorer 9".
The other issue is that, if you're creating a new product, and you know that its covered by a patent, you're willfully infringing on the patent, and are vulnerable to additional liabilities. If you can prove that you didn't know about the patent when you created the product, then you're not going to be hit as hard if you're found infringing.
Well, hard drive failure is only an issue if the hard drive is on and spinning. If you just hook up the drive when you backup, and power it off afterwards, then isn't better than burning to CDs every so often?
I guess it comes down to how long hard drives hold data as opposed to CDs.
Oh, its definitely the same in the rest of the country. When I moved into my house, everything around was basically farmland. Now? Its subdivisions as far as the eye can see.
What's worse is that the mayor and city council of my town explicitly voted against higher density development - arguing that more individual homeowners make for a more stable tax base than commercial property. We'll see how well that argument holds up in the current financial crisis.
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So? A normal, well adjusted person will immediately disregard such a statement to be false. The fact that the suicide victim was not a normal well adjusted person is not the fault of Lori Drew.
Depression is a disease. It is not the "fault" of any one person or circumstance. Blaming Lori Drew for the victim's depression would be like blaming McDonald's for heart attacks caused by fatty foods. Sure, McDonald's bears some responsibility for serving such fare, and likewise, Lori Drew bears some responsibility for her words. But does the level of responsibility rise to a criminal level? I don't think so. Just like one has the ability to choose what one eats, one also has the ability to choose what words one listens to. The fact that the victim chose to listen to her is no fault of Lori Drew's.
What measures are being taken to ensure that the privacy of others who communicate with these students isn't being compromised? Are they having the students tell everyone they communicate with, "Hey, I'm in this data gathering study, so everything you send to my phone is going to be collected for study?"
If they're not doing the above, how are the students any different from the informants employed by the East German STASI?
The other issue, as other posters above have pointed out, is reciprocity. In this study the researchers are taking data about the student's "private" lives, but are not giving back any data about themselves. This is quite unlike their "village" analogy, where, if you find out some private data about me, I have an opportunity to find out private data about you.
Well, it does get used millions of times during those two weeks. I'd say that there would be a fair amount of wear and tear, given the number of visitors.
As far as the first concern goes, ADS-B isn't really that much of a departure from the current scheme of things. Currently air traffic controllers usually rely on each plane having a transponder that broadcasts its ID. This transmission is then picked up by the radar systems and the plane's altitude/position is then plotted on the ATC's scope. ADS-B, as I understand it, allows the plane to append its GPS position to its transponder broadcast, allowing the air traffic system to get a more accurate read on the plane's position.
In either case, if the transmitter were turned off, the ATC would have a very difficult time finding the plane. As an example, on September 11, the air traffic controllers could not locate Flight 93 on their traces until after it had already crashed, since the terrorists turned off the plane's transponder.
The problem with that strategy is that Google is also big enough to be theoretically investigated for anti-trust issues, especially with regards to their acquisition of DoubleClick. If Google threatens Microsoft with anti-trust allegations, Microsoft could reasonably do the same in return.
Do you really think that people will stick with an ISP that has slowed-down access to Google?
Do you really think that most people in the United States have much of a choice as to what ISP they have? In many (most?) places, it comes down to a choice between $PHONE_COMPANY DSL and $CABLE_COMPANY cable internet. In a significant number of places (like, for example, my house) even that choice isn't there. I'm (still!) too far away from the CO to get more than 768kbps DSL from the phone company, so my only choice is Comcast.
This is true. The banking and financial industry is quite heavily regulated, when compared with the technology industry. However, that doesn't mean that the regulations in either case are adequate. After all, many of the derivatives implicated in the current financial crisis were specifically created to help banks avoid their minimum capital requirements in the pursuit of greater profit.
The banks were not forced to provide such loans. The Community Reinvestment Act can only be blamed for a very tiny percentage of the subprime loan market. What really sparked the boom was the realization on the part of banks and other mortgage originators that very few buyers of mortgage securities actually scrutinized the mortgages that are in the tranches. As long as the default rate stayed underneath the modeled default rate, no one cared that the fundamentals were unsound.
As for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, what happened was that they were trying to compete with other subprime lenders and therefore relaxed their own lending requirements. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not pull private industry into this mess; rather, it was quite the opposite.
Two words: false alarms. I've certainly had issues with people getting false alarms from anti-virus for legitimate (virus free) programs. This especially seems to be an issue with system utilities, like anti-spyware and the like. I also used to have issues with A/V flagging ethereal as a virus (probably because of its network activity).
Good viruses do not make themselves known in ways that script kiddie viruses do.
Given the quality of modern popular anti-virus (e.g. Symantec, McAfee, etc.) they probably wouldn't get warnings even with the software.
You can run XP on a new computer because you're tech-savvy enough to know how to wipe the install and reinstall a different OS. But does that describe the average user? I don't think so. After all, we're dealing with a population where nearly 70% need help to get things working right in the first place. For those people, wiping Vista and reinstalling with XP is the psychological equivalent of climbing a mountain. It may be difficult and rewarding, but its much easier to stay on the plains and whine about how much things suck.
Fair point. I do know of a lot of people who haven't bothered running anti-virus in years, and have never been infected because they simply use safe computing practices (like staying diligent with patches, avoiding warez and other suspicious executables, etc.). However, I somehow doubt that this 'Morro' will be targeted towards that demographic.
Not necessarily. As I recall, Apple ran OS 9 apps in a sandboxed/emulated environment after they made the switch to OSX (but before they made the switch to Intel chips), and there wasn't too much complaining.
Of course, I'm not really attuned to the Mac end of this business, so I might just be misinformed.
but a whole lot of them will sit up and take notice if their antivirus pops up and warns them away.
You'd think so, but that's simply not the case. In my time as a PC tech. I saw all too many PCs where the user had clicked on something, seen repeated antivirus/anti-spyware warnings and still continued with the installation. Basically, it comes down to an issue of trust. People distrust their antivirus as much as they distrust the random crapware they download from the Internet. So, when the antivirus pops up and tells them, "Hey, this software is going to bring along a virus," they feel safe in ignoring it, since they've seen all too many false alarms for other things (like tracking cookies).
Really? I've checked my oil and changed flat tires, but I learned both of those things by reading the owners manual for my car, not from the driver's education classes that I was required to take to get my license.
Depends on the context, of course. Yes, if you have very little experience with computers, I can understand if you don't immediately get how to copy files. On the other hand, I see people my age (22-ish) who have trouble with the very same things. These are people who have grown up with technology and computers, yet never really bothered to learn how to do even the basics to accomplish their tasks. There's really no excuse for those people.
Its true that Linux does a lot of things differently than Windows. Its also true that a modern Linux interfaces (e.g. KDE, Gnome, etc.) are doing a better job of hiding that sort of stuff.
What are the two most common uses of personal computers these days? Browsing the internet and running productivity applications. As long as you provide those two things, lots of people won't care that Linux is different - they can still do what they need to do.
Besides, its becoming more and more apparent that Microsoft may actually be driving away consumers in their attempt to make their interfaces more "elegant" (i.e. more Apple-like). I've heard numerous people tell me that the new Office 2007 interface is horrible, and that they actually like the OpenOffice.org interface because it continues the UI tradition of Word 2003.
Ah, so no friends then?
If he had any, do you think he'd still be here?
That one time you got drunk and went off on some insane rant 5 years ago WILL come back to haunt you no matter how many other positive things there are.
I'm not sure about that. With the increasing omnipresence of search engines, you're going to see everybody's drunk insane rant posted and accessible online. If any prospective employer held that sort of thing against me, I doubt that I'd accept the job. Also, there are consequences to not having information about yourself online. After all, if I'm an employer and I don't see any work or any references to you online, I might wonder what you have to hide.
To be fair, you may learn through imitating another, its not right for you to profit by such work. To take an example from another art form - I may learn how to paint by copying an established painter, but that doesn't mean that I can create a painting in substantially the same style and profit from it.
If they put a GPL engine into IE, they would have to GPL IE, and that isn't happening.
Right, but as I understand it, there aren't a whole lot of pure GPL rendering engines out there. Webkit (which Safari and Chrome use) is LGPL, while Gecko is licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Both of these licenses are considerably more permissive than the GPL. There's nothing preventing Microsoft from doing what Apple did, namely wrapping Webkit with their own custom GUI code and passing it off as "Internet Explorer 9".
The other issue is that, if you're creating a new product, and you know that its covered by a patent, you're willfully infringing on the patent, and are vulnerable to additional liabilities. If you can prove that you didn't know about the patent when you created the product, then you're not going to be hit as hard if you're found infringing.
Well, hard drive failure is only an issue if the hard drive is on and spinning. If you just hook up the drive when you backup, and power it off afterwards, then isn't better than burning to CDs every so often?
I guess it comes down to how long hard drives hold data as opposed to CDs.
Oh, its definitely the same in the rest of the country. When I moved into my house, everything around was basically farmland. Now? Its subdivisions as far as the eye can see.
What's worse is that the mayor and city council of my town explicitly voted against higher density development - arguing that more individual homeowners make for a more stable tax base than commercial property. We'll see how well that argument holds up in the current financial crisis.