what's to stop someone from downloading all of the files and revisions, removing the author's names and replacing their own, and putting up their own MTA site claiming that they were the original authors?
i don't see how typing your name in a text file is going to provide any kind of added protection against someone trying to take credit for your work.
whether they use a pseudonym or not, the original MTA authors still have several important things on their side:
a public history of publishing the code on the web (i.e. they have users, fans, and site visitors as their witness)
they probably have unpublished files like raw artwork, PSD files, e-mails, and other local records of their development
they own the domain name, web hosting account, Google Code account, e-mail address, and other accounts used in the project's development.
they have the truth on their side.
book authors publish under pseudonyms, or noms de plume, so why can't programmers?
why should a corporation have the right to free speech? or perhaps a better question might be, why would a corporation need the right to free speech?
a person's right to free speech may be encroached if they, say, create a film that offends some special interest groups or portrays a powerful corporation in a negative light. a lawsuit might be filed against the filmmaker in an attempt to silence him. in this case it would be a matter of free speech.
now, how would the issue of free speech ever arise regarding an abstract commercial entity like a corporation? is the corporation going to become sentient and issue a press release on its own? or publish a book that it wrote itself?
as a commercial entity, the only legal rights a corporation can really have is property rights. and even that is somewhat questionable. really what happens is that some business owner wants to protect his personal or business assets against lawsuits, so he creates a dummy corporation as a legal surrogate to eliminate personal liability for his actions. that way, if he ever gets sued his personal assets and his business are buffered from any legal action.
definitely. robots won't expose patients in frail health to unnecessary pathogens, dirt/dust, or animal dander. imagine if you were allergic to cats and you had to live in a convalescent home with 20-30 cats running all over the place.
well, corporations shouldn't even have rights as an individual. however, if corporate entities are going to be given rights, and in fact more rights/power than regular citizens, then they should be held to higher legal & moral standards and also subjected to greater scrutiny (i feel the same should be applied to politicians, law enforcement, and others in positions of power).
ordinary individuals have to file & report all of their financial earnings, and the court can issue warrants to search and seize the property of individuals or secretly tap their phones. additionally, law enforcement are allowed to obtain phone/credit card/hotel/etc. records, all of which are justified as being necessary to catch criminals and ensure law and order.
so if people are subjected to all of these encroachments of privacy and civil liberties, then why shouldn't corporations be forced to keep records that can assist legal investigations? if anything people should have more of a right to privacy than a corporation, since a corporation is just a commercial entity, not a human-being with natural rights.
::HackintoshDood signs in to Myspace::
MySpace: you received a friend request from AplLawyrBabe81 ::looks at profile pic::
HackintoshDood: sweet, she looks pretty hot. ::approves friend request::
MySpace: you have a chat request from AplLawyrBabe81.
HackintoshDood: awesome! ::clicks::
AplLawyrBabe81: a/s/l?
HackintoshDood: 21/m/san jose, u?
AplLawyrBabe81: kekeke
HackintoshDood: i rly like ur pics. you're hot.;-)
AplLawyrBabe81: kekeke, thanks.;-)
AplLawyrBabe81: ur profile says u r Matt Anderson. is that rly ur name?
HackintoshDood: yep, that's me =P
AplLawyrBabe81: oh, good. then consider yourself served.
AplLawyrBabe81: ur being sued by Apple for copyright infringement.
AplLawyrBabe81: c u in court. k bye!
i hate those places. coming back from Yosemite i had to drive through like 8 of those small towns that the highway passed through. it's such a huge waste of gas slowing down to 30, then speeding back up to 70, then slow back down again and again.
i mean, why did they have to build their town right on top of the highway? why couldn't they just build an exit junction that you can turn off of like normal cities have? having the highway pass through your town and making every vehicle slow down just so they can speed back up again in 2-3 minutes is incredibly annoying and inconsiderate. at least if it were a big city you can argue that having the highway pass right through the city is justified by the convenience it provides to the large local population. but these towns literally have less than a thousand people living in them.
the other thing i don't understand is why they have all these tiny rural towns scattered along a single ~200 mi. stretch of the highway out in the middle of nowhere. wouldn't it make more sense to just consolidate the populations into a single normal-sized city? it would be much more efficient transportation-wise, and it would create a more robust/sustainable, and thus healthier, local economy.
well, supposedly it also has an "intelligent computer built into it" so that it knows to increase its output at dawn when there's more moisture and decrease output at mid-afternoon when it's arid to maximize efficiency. though i wonder if it's just a simple timer that adjust output based strictly on the time of day, or whether it actually senses the humidity level throughout the day and has an algorithm to calculate the most efficient operational schedule for the local climate.
maybe if we just fixed our water supply/distribution system (repeal water privatization) and fixed this vital public infrastructure we could just drink from our local water grid rather than having to buy bottled water that's shipped to us from thousands of miles away.
there's no such thing as innocent people. most people have broken a law at some point in their life whether they know it or not. it could be littering, jaywalking, speeding, driving without a license, underage drinking, possession of stolen goods, removing the tag from a bed mattress (only illegal if you sell the mattress afterwards), etc.
even if someone is guilty of a stereotypical "criminal act" like robbery, theft, drug dealing/possession, etc. that doesn't mean they should be locked up for life. even if you don't care about civility or human rights, a criminal justice system should be designed with public good in mind. and, generally speaking, keeping 10% of the population locked up is not good for any society.
it's both, more cost-effective and societally beneficial, to implement of system of treatment/corrections in conjunction with restorative justice or reparations whereby the victim is paid restitution in some way by the offender.
ok, since you guys are electronics geeks, can you answer this question for me--if an LED is just a silicon carbide/gallium arsenide/etc. crystal with two electrodes attached, then why does it matter which way the current is flowing? it seemed like in the YouTube video he just arbitrarily clipped an electrode onto one end of the SiC crystal, and then randomly touched the needle to the crystal in different places to create light.
in other words, what determines which end is the anode and which end is the cathode in a commercial LED, and why does it matter?
it seems to in the video. although it's not the cat's-whisker detector itself that emits the light, it's the silicon carbide crystal that produces the illumination when the cat's whisker wire is touching certain places. the detector by itself without any crystal isn't a diode at all, and with other types of crystals is just a diode that doesn't produce any light.
well, the reason i consider it negligence is that it fails the "reasonable person" standard, and i consider it negligence of duty & willful blindness (to the fact that they were going after an innocent person). this is of course assuming that this debacle was driven by gross incompetence rather than malice. ie. they really thought (or deluded themselves into thinking) that they were "doing the right thing." i suppose that's the difference between a negligent tort and an intentional tort.
now, you may say that the behavior demonstrates malice. but i'd respond that, in criminal justice systems which are based on the ideals of punishment/vengeance rather than public good/safety & rehabilitation, every prosecution demonstrates some level of malice. when you are seeking vengeance to punish someone, you are by definition demonstrating malicious behavior. the difference here is that the defendant happens to be innocent, and it was likely negligence/incompetence that caused this small detail to be glanced over throughout the trial(s).
but that's just not how HTML e-mails are stored/archived. they're generally stored as MIME HTML (.mht/.mhtml), which Microsoft also uses as their "Web Archive" format to save web pages, or other similar formats (.chm,.webarchive, etc.).
like the data URI scheme, these formats bind an HTML document with normally externally linked in-line resources, storing the e-mail as a single file. this is similar to how the MIME standard handles "multipart/mixed" content-types, such as e-mail attachments. it would take a lot of time & resources to extract all of the embedded images and attachments from over a billion e-mails and eliminate duplicate resources.
and even if they manage to do all that, it would just make moving, copying and transferring individual e-mail messages that much more difficult since now all the in-line resources are being externally linked to via a complex directory structure that all the e-mail messages are integrated into.
well, let's just say that Microsoft isn't the only one using these tactics. they're just being singled out at the moment because they've got a class-action lawsuit on their hands. the use of fine print by businesses has always been a controversial legal issue, and credit card companies and lenders are traditionally the biggest abusers of this type of deceit, using fine print to engage in bait-and-switch tactics.
but just because we've gotten accustomed to getting the wool pulled over our eyes in this way doesn't mean that it's right. that's why consumer advocacy groups have long pushed for greater honesty in advertising. there were even two laws passed (in the U.S.) against the use of fine print in bate-and-switch marketing campaigns, but these were overturned by the SCOTUS in the 90's and led to even more deceptive advertising practices.
probably not, but i think robots are more low maintenance. they won't pee everywhere, tear up furniture, or make a mess. they also won't starve or begin to stink if the patient forgets to take care of them.
i mean, even dogs still have some level of autonomy and needs of their own. a robotic pet won't mind being held in the lap of a patient and being petted for hours. it can also be turned off when the patient goes to sleep.
you could even give every patient in a convalescent home their own robotic pet to keep in their room. but doing that with real animals would be a logistical nightmare for the staff. instead of taking care of 100 patients they now have to take care of 100 patients and 100 animals.
while this might not be useful for lawnmowers, it might be useful for robotic pets, caretakers, help desk workers, etc. who will be engaging in social interaction with people.
one interesting application for robotics that's already in trials in some places (in Germany, i think) is using robotic animals to provide environmental enrichment for convalescent patients. for instance, they might give an elderly patient a robotic seal pup to talk to, interact with, and take care of. for such robots, emotional expressiveness is extremely vital.
that sounds pretty cool actually (and doesn't look half bad either). though i'm still waiting for public wireless internet access to gain more widespread adoption so we can start seeing true wireless internet radios. i was sorta hoping Last.fm would come out with a portable media player. they're more indie friendly, and their recommendation system and just the overall site interface are both really well designed.
in any case, Apple is really demonstrating how screwed up our legal system is, and particularly the abuse of the DMCA by corporate juggernauts like themselves. guilt and innocence don't even matter in such lopsided match ups. this kind of corporate bullying not only shows the ugly side of the legal system, but also the ugly side of Apple.
if such actions are tolerated by consumers, then we'll continue to see consumer rights being eroded to the point that we'll need the express permission of Apple/Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo/et al. just to turn on the devices we've purchased. if breaking the DMCA is the only way to create software that's interoperable with the iPod, then Apple can take their DMCA notice and shove it.
Apple has a near monopoly on PMPs, and they're now abusing their market dominance to gain an unfair monopoly on the desktop music player/media manager market as well. DMCA or no DMCA, you can't use one monopoly to muscle out your competitors in another market. this is clearly anti-competitive behavior. Apple doesn't need to publish the specifications to their proprietary hardware/software, but they shouldn't be allowed to suppress other people's attempts to reverse-engineer those specs.
i know that 23 is young. that was my point. my boss is much older than me, partied way more than me when he was younger, and is still much sharper mentally than i am.
and i don't recall ever claiming that drugs or partying makes one wise, or passing judgment on people in their 30's. i merely stated that certain abilities peak when one reaches their mid 20's. that's hardly passing judgment. with my drug-addled brain i can only hope that i haven't reached my mental peak yet.
and just because a 20-year-old has faster reflexes and response times than a 60-year-old doesn't mean he's smarter or more knowledgeable. however, that 20-year-old is probably more mentally flexible and perhaps more creative.
those were just figures i remembered off the top of my head (it might have been from a BBC or NatGeo documentary or maybe an article from NewScientist) so they may not be accurate. but my point remains, just shift the referenced ages as appropriate.
perhaps mid 20's is more to do with reflexes and response times, but those things have little to do with overall intelligence/knowledgeability. but i do know that we perform certain types of mental tasks better when we're younger. for instance, young children are better at remembering unfamiliar visual information, like a screen filled with random numbers, or made-up bugs/creatures. this is because the brain goes through 2 different stages of rapid development during which infrequently used neuronal connections are pruned, which optimizes the brain for commonly performed tasks like facial recognition--which adults are generally better at than small children.
however, i'm very glad to hear about you and your father's experiences. i'm 23 myself, and i really hope to god that i haven't reached my intellectual peak already, as i got a little sidetracked after high school and didn't really regain my focus until more recently. it's also a comforting thought that i still have a few years to reach my full physical potential--a lot of people say i look like i'm only 16, and i'm also pretty scrawny; though i'm not holding out too much hope on that.
yea, i suppose it's better to have a good balance of old & new. it's not just about counterbalancing each other, but also because when you have to convince a stubborn old-timer whose approval you need to proceed, it makes you think more carefully about your proposals, which puts that much more scrutiny on radical & untested ideas.
it's always good to have a little tension to force people to put more thought into their idea/position since they'll have to defend it against opposing viewpoints. it also helps to stimulate discussion, which itself can lead to new innovations or improvements on existing proposals.
i think most businesses understand that you need little new blood as well as experienced senior managers. but government & politics is a different story. even elected officials tend to always be middle-aged individuals. perhaps voters put too much weight on experience, which is often equated with qualification/aptitude, and not enough weight on actual intelligence & ability. someone who's relatively young and inexperienced can still be more knowledgeable or competent than an older seasoned politician. someone who's not a "professional politician" is also more likely to bring a fresh perspective with them, one that is more in touch with the electorate. they're the ones who're likely to see the problems with the existing system and make the necessary reforms.
Don't worry, though, there's hope for us all yet. Just a few days ago, my mother (88) told me how she'd met General Patton while she was taking a walk in April '45, a story I'd never heard before.
how do you know that you hadn't already heard the story before but just forgot about it? =P
joking aside, i agree with you. i'm only 23 but i sometimes feel like i'm senile. i used to have really good memory, but then i started smoking a lot of pot, drinking, and just partying way too much for my own good. the pot in particular though really shot my short-term memory to shit. but since i stopped smoking pot a few years ago my memory's started to bounce back.
my boss, who's in his mid-40's used to party quite a lot as well when he was managing bands like Suicidal Tendencies and D.R.I. i think he may have even been a bigger stoner than i used to be. but he's long since settled down and rarely even drinks anymore. and while he often makes self-deprecating remarks about his brain/memory whilst alluding to his past marijuana use & drug-habits, he's actually still pretty sharp in general--more so than i am, at least. he's got a pretty quick wit, and despite not being the "technical type" he still picks up on computer-related stuff surprisingly fast. that's not even mentioning his acumen as a businessman and record label exec.
and then there was his late neighbor who was in her late-90's but still very alert and lucid. despite her age she was still able to recall things from WW II.
is that why you're always misplacing your keys and finding the phone in the fridge?
people become senile as they get older because the brain, like the rest of your body, deteriorates with age. how much it deteriorates depends on how you live. unfortunately, as many people get older they become less and less active, and it becomes a vicious cycle.
if you learn to place chess when you're young, and you never stop playing chess, you'll still be able to play quite well even in your old age. you won't be as fast as you were in your mid-20's, but you'll probably still be fast in your mid 80's as you were in your mid-to-late-30's. as long as you keep your brain active, the areas that you use regularly will not degrade very much. so yes, in theory if everyone remained active in their golden years, their brain will still function quite well in all the ways "that matter." but that's not how things are in reality.
in reality people become less active, both physically and mentally, as they age. they don't push themselves as hard mentally, and they also stop stretching their mind/creativity. senior citizens also tend to be less socially active, and a lack of regular social interaction/stimulation can also lead to mental decline.
it's got nothing to do with performing menial work for others. neurological degradation is not the same as becoming wiser. nor is becoming more and more useless the same as becoming sager.
plus you now have someone who is inflexible and deeply entrenched in their ways managing (and suppressing the creativity of) younger and more capable individuals--who are the ones with the fresh new ideas.
this is also the reason why government is dominated by conservative/reactionary attitudes while the public is demanding reform. being old and senile is almost a requirement for high-level government positions, which guarantees that public policy is always a step behind the times, and that politicians are utterly detached from contemporary science & technology.
i mean, there is certainly value to the experience that comes with age, but having an organization that is managed/dominated entirely by middle-aged individuals who are set in their ways can stifle innovation and cause the organization to be mismanaged.
anyone who's been reading Slashdot since "Longhorn" started development would know that Microsoft had always intended for Vista to have different levels of UI capabilities depending on the hardware it is running on. that's not news to anyone here, and even without the fine print most Slashdotters wouldn't equate the "Vista Capable/Ready" sticker with "Aero Capable."
however, and this is a pretty big however, we're not the average consumer. unless you're a tech geek, you're not going to know these details about Vista, or know what Aero even is. just like unless you're a car-buff you're probably not going to know what kind of engine your new car has other than that it's a V4/V6/V8. should a car-buyer know the internal workings of the vehicle they are looking to purchase? i think that's debatable. but in this case it's completely besides the point.
consumers were clearly misled in this case with a combination of deceptive actions on the part of Microsoft:
first off, the Vista advertising campaign focused entirely on the "Vista Premium" setup, which is why people don't think they're getting the "full Vista experience" with their non-Premium setups.
secondly, the Vista advertising campaign never even mentions "Premium" or "Vista Premium" but simply presents the product shown as "Windows Vista."
Microsoft reinforced this notion further by deliberately used a single-tier "Vista Capable" program, which used a single sticker on every Vista machine without distinguishing which ones fully-supported the heavily advertised "Vista Premium" experience.
you can't have it both ways. you either advertise your product as clearly having multiple tiers, or you deliver the full "premium" experience which includes all of the features advertised.
and, IANAL, but i don't think fine print by itself is sufficient defense against false advertisement charges. i highly doubt that there's anyone out there who's never missed a line of fine print, either in a contract they're signing, a TV commercial they watched, a magazine ad they glanced over, or (in this case "fast talking") a radio commercial. the very nature of fine print/fast talking makes it impossible, or at least impractical, for an ordinary human-being (as opposed to the radioactively-enhanced type) to catch all of the information businesses try to slip past consumers. just like it's impractical for a consumer to become an expert on every product they're looking to purchase.
i don't know about being monitored all the time (just because i'm in public doesn't mean i want people whom i can't see watching me over an internet video stream), but i think the wireless mesh network could definitely be expanded to non-city-vehicles.
perhaps with the integration of vehicle GPS systems such networks can provide real-time traffic reports/analysis to drivers. i'd be interested in seeing whether this kind of smart p2p "traffic network" could optimize traffic flow by directing drivers to the most efficient route with regards to traffic conditions.
if a freeway gets too backed up, it can slow down or cause traffic jams in other connected freeways. but if people can look up real-time traffic information then they might avoid congested routes, preventing severe traffic jams from forming. this would also help distribute traffic flow more evenly rather than having a few overcrowded routes and a bunch of underutilized routes.
this would also lower the cost of rolling out wireless access in a lot of areas.
Slashdot Mirror
what's to stop someone from downloading all of the files and revisions, removing the author's names and replacing their own, and putting up their own MTA site claiming that they were the original authors?
i don't see how typing your name in a text file is going to provide any kind of added protection against someone trying to take credit for your work.
whether they use a pseudonym or not, the original MTA authors still have several important things on their side:
book authors publish under pseudonyms, or noms de plume, so why can't programmers?
why should a corporation have the right to free speech? or perhaps a better question might be, why would a corporation need the right to free speech?
a person's right to free speech may be encroached if they, say, create a film that offends some special interest groups or portrays a powerful corporation in a negative light. a lawsuit might be filed against the filmmaker in an attempt to silence him. in this case it would be a matter of free speech.
now, how would the issue of free speech ever arise regarding an abstract commercial entity like a corporation? is the corporation going to become sentient and issue a press release on its own? or publish a book that it wrote itself?
as a commercial entity, the only legal rights a corporation can really have is property rights. and even that is somewhat questionable. really what happens is that some business owner wants to protect his personal or business assets against lawsuits, so he creates a dummy corporation as a legal surrogate to eliminate personal liability for his actions. that way, if he ever gets sued his personal assets and his business are buffered from any legal action.
definitely. robots won't expose patients in frail health to unnecessary pathogens, dirt/dust, or animal dander. imagine if you were allergic to cats and you had to live in a convalescent home with 20-30 cats running all over the place.
well, corporations shouldn't even have rights as an individual. however, if corporate entities are going to be given rights, and in fact more rights/power than regular citizens, then they should be held to higher legal & moral standards and also subjected to greater scrutiny (i feel the same should be applied to politicians, law enforcement, and others in positions of power).
ordinary individuals have to file & report all of their financial earnings, and the court can issue warrants to search and seize the property of individuals or secretly tap their phones. additionally, law enforcement are allowed to obtain phone/credit card/hotel/etc. records, all of which are justified as being necessary to catch criminals and ensure law and order.
so if people are subjected to all of these encroachments of privacy and civil liberties, then why shouldn't corporations be forced to keep records that can assist legal investigations? if anything people should have more of a right to privacy than a corporation, since a corporation is just a commercial entity, not a human-being with natural rights.
::HackintoshDood signs in to Myspace::
::looks at profile pic::
::approves friend request::
::clicks:: ;-) ;-)
MySpace: you received a friend request from AplLawyrBabe81
HackintoshDood: sweet, she looks pretty hot.
MySpace: you have a chat request from AplLawyrBabe81.
HackintoshDood: awesome!
AplLawyrBabe81: a/s/l?
HackintoshDood: 21/m/san jose, u?
AplLawyrBabe81: kekeke
HackintoshDood: i rly like ur pics. you're hot.
AplLawyrBabe81: kekeke, thanks.
AplLawyrBabe81: ur profile says u r Matt Anderson. is that rly ur name?
HackintoshDood: yep, that's me =P
AplLawyrBabe81: oh, good. then consider yourself served.
AplLawyrBabe81: ur being sued by Apple for copyright infringement.
AplLawyrBabe81: c u in court. k bye!
i hate those places. coming back from Yosemite i had to drive through like 8 of those small towns that the highway passed through. it's such a huge waste of gas slowing down to 30, then speeding back up to 70, then slow back down again and again.
i mean, why did they have to build their town right on top of the highway? why couldn't they just build an exit junction that you can turn off of like normal cities have? having the highway pass through your town and making every vehicle slow down just so they can speed back up again in 2-3 minutes is incredibly annoying and inconsiderate. at least if it were a big city you can argue that having the highway pass right through the city is justified by the convenience it provides to the large local population. but these towns literally have less than a thousand people living in them.
the other thing i don't understand is why they have all these tiny rural towns scattered along a single ~200 mi. stretch of the highway out in the middle of nowhere. wouldn't it make more sense to just consolidate the populations into a single normal-sized city? it would be much more efficient transportation-wise, and it would create a more robust/sustainable, and thus healthier, local economy.
well, supposedly it also has an "intelligent computer built into it" so that it knows to increase its output at dawn when there's more moisture and decrease output at mid-afternoon when it's arid to maximize efficiency. though i wonder if it's just a simple timer that adjust output based strictly on the time of day, or whether it actually senses the humidity level throughout the day and has an algorithm to calculate the most efficient operational schedule for the local climate.
maybe if we just fixed our water supply/distribution system (repeal water privatization) and fixed this vital public infrastructure we could just drink from our local water grid rather than having to buy bottled water that's shipped to us from thousands of miles away.
there's no such thing as innocent people. most people have broken a law at some point in their life whether they know it or not. it could be littering, jaywalking, speeding, driving without a license, underage drinking, possession of stolen goods, removing the tag from a bed mattress (only illegal if you sell the mattress afterwards), etc.
even if someone is guilty of a stereotypical "criminal act" like robbery, theft, drug dealing/possession, etc. that doesn't mean they should be locked up for life. even if you don't care about civility or human rights, a criminal justice system should be designed with public good in mind. and, generally speaking, keeping 10% of the population locked up is not good for any society.
it's both, more cost-effective and societally beneficial, to implement of system of treatment/corrections in conjunction with restorative justice or reparations whereby the victim is paid restitution in some way by the offender.
ok, since you guys are electronics geeks, can you answer this question for me--if an LED is just a silicon carbide/gallium arsenide/etc. crystal with two electrodes attached, then why does it matter which way the current is flowing? it seemed like in the YouTube video he just arbitrarily clipped an electrode onto one end of the SiC crystal, and then randomly touched the needle to the crystal in different places to create light.
in other words, what determines which end is the anode and which end is the cathode in a commercial LED, and why does it matter?
it seems to in the video. although it's not the cat's-whisker detector itself that emits the light, it's the silicon carbide crystal that produces the illumination when the cat's whisker wire is touching certain places. the detector by itself without any crystal isn't a diode at all, and with other types of crystals is just a diode that doesn't produce any light.
well, the reason i consider it negligence is that it fails the "reasonable person" standard, and i consider it negligence of duty & willful blindness (to the fact that they were going after an innocent person). this is of course assuming that this debacle was driven by gross incompetence rather than malice. ie. they really thought (or deluded themselves into thinking) that they were "doing the right thing." i suppose that's the difference between a negligent tort and an intentional tort.
now, you may say that the behavior demonstrates malice. but i'd respond that, in criminal justice systems which are based on the ideals of punishment/vengeance rather than public good/safety & rehabilitation, every prosecution demonstrates some level of malice. when you are seeking vengeance to punish someone, you are by definition demonstrating malicious behavior. the difference here is that the defendant happens to be innocent, and it was likely negligence/incompetence that caused this small detail to be glanced over throughout the trial(s).
but that's just not how HTML e-mails are stored/archived. they're generally stored as MIME HTML (.mht/.mhtml), which Microsoft also uses as their "Web Archive" format to save web pages, or other similar formats (.chm, .webarchive, etc.).
like the data URI scheme, these formats bind an HTML document with normally externally linked in-line resources, storing the e-mail as a single file. this is similar to how the MIME standard handles "multipart/mixed" content-types, such as e-mail attachments. it would take a lot of time & resources to extract all of the embedded images and attachments from over a billion e-mails and eliminate duplicate resources.
and even if they manage to do all that, it would just make moving, copying and transferring individual e-mail messages that much more difficult since now all the in-line resources are being externally linked to via a complex directory structure that all the e-mail messages are integrated into.
well, let's just say that Microsoft isn't the only one using these tactics. they're just being singled out at the moment because they've got a class-action lawsuit on their hands. the use of fine print by businesses has always been a controversial legal issue, and credit card companies and lenders are traditionally the biggest abusers of this type of deceit, using fine print to engage in bait-and-switch tactics.
but just because we've gotten accustomed to getting the wool pulled over our eyes in this way doesn't mean that it's right. that's why consumer advocacy groups have long pushed for greater honesty in advertising. there were even two laws passed (in the U.S.) against the use of fine print in bate-and-switch marketing campaigns, but these were overturned by the SCOTUS in the 90's and led to even more deceptive advertising practices.
probably not, but i think robots are more low maintenance. they won't pee everywhere, tear up furniture, or make a mess. they also won't starve or begin to stink if the patient forgets to take care of them.
i mean, even dogs still have some level of autonomy and needs of their own. a robotic pet won't mind being held in the lap of a patient and being petted for hours. it can also be turned off when the patient goes to sleep.
you could even give every patient in a convalescent home their own robotic pet to keep in their room. but doing that with real animals would be a logistical nightmare for the staff. instead of taking care of 100 patients they now have to take care of 100 patients and 100 animals.
while this might not be useful for lawnmowers, it might be useful for robotic pets, caretakers, help desk workers, etc. who will be engaging in social interaction with people.
one interesting application for robotics that's already in trials in some places (in Germany, i think) is using robotic animals to provide environmental enrichment for convalescent patients. for instance, they might give an elderly patient a robotic seal pup to talk to, interact with, and take care of. for such robots, emotional expressiveness is extremely vital.
that sounds pretty cool actually (and doesn't look half bad either). though i'm still waiting for public wireless internet access to gain more widespread adoption so we can start seeing true wireless internet radios. i was sorta hoping Last.fm would come out with a portable media player. they're more indie friendly, and their recommendation system and just the overall site interface are both really well designed.
in any case, Apple is really demonstrating how screwed up our legal system is, and particularly the abuse of the DMCA by corporate juggernauts like themselves. guilt and innocence don't even matter in such lopsided match ups. this kind of corporate bullying not only shows the ugly side of the legal system, but also the ugly side of Apple.
if such actions are tolerated by consumers, then we'll continue to see consumer rights being eroded to the point that we'll need the express permission of Apple/Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo/et al. just to turn on the devices we've purchased. if breaking the DMCA is the only way to create software that's interoperable with the iPod, then Apple can take their DMCA notice and shove it.
Apple has a near monopoly on PMPs, and they're now abusing their market dominance to gain an unfair monopoly on the desktop music player/media manager market as well. DMCA or no DMCA, you can't use one monopoly to muscle out your competitors in another market. this is clearly anti-competitive behavior. Apple doesn't need to publish the specifications to their proprietary hardware/software, but they shouldn't be allowed to suppress other people's attempts to reverse-engineer those specs.
i know that 23 is young. that was my point. my boss is much older than me, partied way more than me when he was younger, and is still much sharper mentally than i am.
and i don't recall ever claiming that drugs or partying makes one wise, or passing judgment on people in their 30's. i merely stated that certain abilities peak when one reaches their mid 20's. that's hardly passing judgment. with my drug-addled brain i can only hope that i haven't reached my mental peak yet.
and just because a 20-year-old has faster reflexes and response times than a 60-year-old doesn't mean he's smarter or more knowledgeable. however, that 20-year-old is probably more mentally flexible and perhaps more creative.
those were just figures i remembered off the top of my head (it might have been from a BBC or NatGeo documentary or maybe an article from NewScientist) so they may not be accurate. but my point remains, just shift the referenced ages as appropriate.
perhaps mid 20's is more to do with reflexes and response times, but those things have little to do with overall intelligence/knowledgeability. but i do know that we perform certain types of mental tasks better when we're younger. for instance, young children are better at remembering unfamiliar visual information, like a screen filled with random numbers, or made-up bugs/creatures. this is because the brain goes through 2 different stages of rapid development during which infrequently used neuronal connections are pruned, which optimizes the brain for commonly performed tasks like facial recognition--which adults are generally better at than small children.
however, i'm very glad to hear about you and your father's experiences. i'm 23 myself, and i really hope to god that i haven't reached my intellectual peak already, as i got a little sidetracked after high school and didn't really regain my focus until more recently. it's also a comforting thought that i still have a few years to reach my full physical potential--a lot of people say i look like i'm only 16, and i'm also pretty scrawny; though i'm not holding out too much hope on that.
yea, i suppose it's better to have a good balance of old & new. it's not just about counterbalancing each other, but also because when you have to convince a stubborn old-timer whose approval you need to proceed, it makes you think more carefully about your proposals, which puts that much more scrutiny on radical & untested ideas.
it's always good to have a little tension to force people to put more thought into their idea/position since they'll have to defend it against opposing viewpoints. it also helps to stimulate discussion, which itself can lead to new innovations or improvements on existing proposals.
i think most businesses understand that you need little new blood as well as experienced senior managers. but government & politics is a different story. even elected officials tend to always be middle-aged individuals. perhaps voters put too much weight on experience, which is often equated with qualification/aptitude, and not enough weight on actual intelligence & ability. someone who's relatively young and inexperienced can still be more knowledgeable or competent than an older seasoned politician. someone who's not a "professional politician" is also more likely to bring a fresh perspective with them, one that is more in touch with the electorate. they're the ones who're likely to see the problems with the existing system and make the necessary reforms.
how do you know that you hadn't already heard the story before but just forgot about it? =P
joking aside, i agree with you. i'm only 23 but i sometimes feel like i'm senile. i used to have really good memory, but then i started smoking a lot of pot, drinking, and just partying way too much for my own good. the pot in particular though really shot my short-term memory to shit. but since i stopped smoking pot a few years ago my memory's started to bounce back.
my boss, who's in his mid-40's used to party quite a lot as well when he was managing bands like Suicidal Tendencies and D.R.I. i think he may have even been a bigger stoner than i used to be. but he's long since settled down and rarely even drinks anymore. and while he often makes self-deprecating remarks about his brain/memory whilst alluding to his past marijuana use & drug-habits, he's actually still pretty sharp in general--more so than i am, at least. he's got a pretty quick wit, and despite not being the "technical type" he still picks up on computer-related stuff surprisingly fast. that's not even mentioning his acumen as a businessman and record label exec.
and then there was his late neighbor who was in her late-90's but still very alert and lucid. despite her age she was still able to recall things from WW II.
is that why you're always misplacing your keys and finding the phone in the fridge?
people become senile as they get older because the brain, like the rest of your body, deteriorates with age. how much it deteriorates depends on how you live. unfortunately, as many people get older they become less and less active, and it becomes a vicious cycle.
if you learn to place chess when you're young, and you never stop playing chess, you'll still be able to play quite well even in your old age. you won't be as fast as you were in your mid-20's, but you'll probably still be fast in your mid 80's as you were in your mid-to-late-30's. as long as you keep your brain active, the areas that you use regularly will not degrade very much. so yes, in theory if everyone remained active in their golden years, their brain will still function quite well in all the ways "that matter." but that's not how things are in reality.
in reality people become less active, both physically and mentally, as they age. they don't push themselves as hard mentally, and they also stop stretching their mind/creativity. senior citizens also tend to be less socially active, and a lack of regular social interaction/stimulation can also lead to mental decline.
it's got nothing to do with performing menial work for others. neurological degradation is not the same as becoming wiser. nor is becoming more and more useless the same as becoming sager.
plus you now have someone who is inflexible and deeply entrenched in their ways managing (and suppressing the creativity of) younger and more capable individuals--who are the ones with the fresh new ideas.
this is also the reason why government is dominated by conservative/reactionary attitudes while the public is demanding reform. being old and senile is almost a requirement for high-level government positions, which guarantees that public policy is always a step behind the times, and that politicians are utterly detached from contemporary science & technology.
i mean, there is certainly value to the experience that comes with age, but having an organization that is managed/dominated entirely by middle-aged individuals who are set in their ways can stifle innovation and cause the organization to be mismanaged.
i don't think i'd take a sleeping pill that causes sleep walking.
but maybe if they marketed it as a diet pill that lets you lose weight while sleeping...
anyone who's been reading Slashdot since "Longhorn" started development would know that Microsoft had always intended for Vista to have different levels of UI capabilities depending on the hardware it is running on. that's not news to anyone here, and even without the fine print most Slashdotters wouldn't equate the "Vista Capable/Ready" sticker with "Aero Capable."
however, and this is a pretty big however, we're not the average consumer. unless you're a tech geek, you're not going to know these details about Vista, or know what Aero even is. just like unless you're a car-buff you're probably not going to know what kind of engine your new car has other than that it's a V4/V6/V8. should a car-buyer know the internal workings of the vehicle they are looking to purchase? i think that's debatable. but in this case it's completely besides the point.
consumers were clearly misled in this case with a combination of deceptive actions on the part of Microsoft:
you can't have it both ways. you either advertise your product as clearly having multiple tiers, or you deliver the full "premium" experience which includes all of the features advertised.
and, IANAL, but i don't think fine print by itself is sufficient defense against false advertisement charges. i highly doubt that there's anyone out there who's never missed a line of fine print, either in a contract they're signing, a TV commercial they watched, a magazine ad they glanced over, or (in this case "fast talking") a radio commercial. the very nature of fine print/fast talking makes it impossible, or at least impractical, for an ordinary human-being (as opposed to the radioactively-enhanced type) to catch all of the information businesses try to slip past consumers. just like it's impractical for a consumer to become an expert on every product they're looking to purchase.
i don't know about being monitored all the time (just because i'm in public doesn't mean i want people whom i can't see watching me over an internet video stream), but i think the wireless mesh network could definitely be expanded to non-city-vehicles.
perhaps with the integration of vehicle GPS systems such networks can provide real-time traffic reports/analysis to drivers. i'd be interested in seeing whether this kind of smart p2p "traffic network" could optimize traffic flow by directing drivers to the most efficient route with regards to traffic conditions.
if a freeway gets too backed up, it can slow down or cause traffic jams in other connected freeways. but if people can look up real-time traffic information then they might avoid congested routes, preventing severe traffic jams from forming. this would also help distribute traffic flow more evenly rather than having a few overcrowded routes and a bunch of underutilized routes.
this would also lower the cost of rolling out wireless access in a lot of areas.