When I had an employer try to get me to sign a non-compete ( months after I stared working there), I said I would agree if he would agree not to hire my replacement when I left for the same period of time. If I can't replace my employer, he can't replace his employee.
That ended that discussion. I left a few weeks later.
"controls the tools driver use, monitors their approval ratings and terminates their access to the system if their ratings fall..."
So I'm a Slashdot employee now?
So you're saying ugliness should be deemed a disability too? Just because something is a factor discriminated against does not make it a disability. Being gay, female, old, young, Muslim, whatever is not a disability. It is a state of being.
If you don't want people to see you acting like a drunken idiot, wouldn't it be best to just not act like a drunken idiot? Seems easier than worrying about someone capturing it to video. He'll almost every phone out there can record video today.
I've worked as a bouncer. I never understood the expectation that it was okay to act like an idiot because you were drunk. You are responsible for your actions - period. A bar is a public place. If you do something in a public place, the public will see you. Don't complain when a member of that public shares your asinine behaviour with the rest of the public who happened to be somewhere else and missed the originL performance.
Really? You find it strange that mainstream media is more interested in attacking the easy target (and let's face it, Assange really is easy to pick on) instead of the issues that have been raised? Investigating allegations of wrong doing requires a journalist; talking about a persons dress, commenting on his alleged actions and pointing out his obvious strange mannerisms or behaviour only takes a talking head. No shortage of those around but I fear real journalists may be in shorter supply.
If I'm looking at reading fiction, like a short story by Hemingway, how fast I can get through it isn't of interest to me. Speed of use becomes a factor if I am checking a reference manual, in which case full text searching is sure a lot easier than relying on an index or table of contents.
There are a lot of reasons I would consider an iPad, Kindle, or some other electronic reader (I use my iPod Touch to read books now) as an alternative to print and speed of completion isn't one of those considerations. I think this is really an oversimplified measure of "best", especially if one is trying to rate overall "usability" which this test proposes to assess.
At first, I was curious why it's even considered news worthy when Gates spends this kind of money on something.
A quick google search tells me that Bill Gates is worth over $50 billion, so $300,000 isn't even the merest fraction of what he's worth. This would be less than those people we've all met that toss away a penny because it's not worth having in their pocket. The Gates Foundation gives out over $1.5 billion a year but I don't recall seeing anything on./ about that.
Then look at what it is he is doing with this pocket lint amount of cash - paying for RESEARCH into something. Did you read the article? He's not paying anyone to shoot salt water into the air, he's not even paying for research into shooting salt water into the air; he's paying for research into "converting salt water into tiny particles" and pumping that into the air. The navies of the world have been evaporating salt water to produce fresh water for decades (used to be my job). It should be noted that this isn't Gates' idea, it comes from a group of climate researching scientists who are concerned that governments are not going to do anything about global warming and greenhouse gases and don't think it is wise to sit around and wait.
I've certainly never considered myself a Bill Gates fanboi, but let's call this what it is, Gates bashing. Personally I despise a lot of the business practices I have seen reported about Microsoft in general, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Gates doesn't appear to be hiding out on a private island in the tropics enjoying his ill-gotten gains. He is considered one of the world's most generous philanthropists and in this case, appears to have done more research and put more energy and effort into considering global warming and what can be done about it than I would be prepared to believe most commenters in this forum have.
Ridicule the man for believing in pipe-dreams or buying snake oil if you feel the need, but I don't think you can vilify him for this one. You'll have to wait for the next version of MS Office for that.
Last night I saw an ad for Vonage on the iPhone, advertising that you can use the Vonage VOIP service on your iPhone now. To have not only the app ready to go but the TV ad as well took some lead time I should think. Developers certainly knew this was coming.
If I am reading TFA correctly, this was putting a stop to a pilot program. Shouldn't the lack of text-to-speech simply be a finding of the pilot on the way to a final decision on whether to use it or not? And of course, the pilot is being sponsored by the maker of the product, who would hear the concerns and respond to make sure their product meets ALL of the requirements. My question is, after a successful pilot, would they be providing free Kindles to all students or does this become another expense for the already cash strapped student?
Aren't the costs of post secondary education more discriminatory to a poor student than the availability of a Kindle is to a blind student?
I'm also curious about other classroom "visual aids": Charts, graphs, pictures, the widget the prof holds up to show the students...How have these been handled since starting to make serious efforts to accommodate students that are handicapped...disabled...physically challenged, whatever the politically correct term is now.
In my opinion, we do a disservice to these individuals by no longer recognizing that they are overcoming a challenge that other students face and are able to compete on an equal footing in spite of it.
Are there any slashdot readers that are themselves blind or deaf or have some other challenge they have had to deal with in a classroom who could weigh in on the topic with first hand experience? I honestly have no real personal point of reference. Other than slowly failing eyesight and hearing due to age, which is more in the pain-in-the-ass category than anything else, I've never had to deal with something like this.
I have to admit that on some level, I agree with some comments here that this is like blinding all the rest of the students to make things even. I argued once with a wheelchair-bound friend that it was not discrimination that kept him from being a firefighter, it was his inability to go up and down ladders.
Phishing attacks would presumably be trying to get some otherwise secured info from the victim. What would the victim of this attack provide in response to this email? Credit card info? Online banking credentials? Warcraft account info? sheesh. As someone above stated, the guy sent an email and it got through. No news there. This isn't phishing, it's spam. And not even good spam. I would bet more people would be trying to buy cheap viagra than join Bill's Linkedin.
How do you know his decision to do a criminal record check was "a sudden emotion-driven decision"? Actually, it sounds to me like a rational decision to make if he was concerned about the situation. I'm not debating how ethical the decision was here, just the rationality of it.
Drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels, grabbing his service revolver, driving over to the house at midnight and hammering on the door til someone answers and them threatening his life would qualify as sudden and emotion driven.
Wow, slashdot users certainly want to hold this guy to an amazingly high standard - one that I question whether they could meet themselves.
Twenty years ago he checked the criminal record of the man his son was going to be living with. Who here would not have done the same thing if they had the access? Twenty years ago he was censured for this act. So he made a mistake and paid the price. Heck after 20 years if he'd been to court and been fined for this, he'd probably have been able to have it removed from his record. He still made a point of disclosing it and then further clarified when he went back and read his notes on the incident and apologized for the discrepancy in the two accounts.
If you're seeking a saint to take a political appointment, I'd recommend not holding your breathe.
Why ask an author about reading? A successful author may be a good source of information about writing, but that doesn't necessarily make him a good reader. [Obligatory car analogy] A mechanic may be able to drive, but I'd probably get better answers about driving from...well...a driver!
Now an author's complaint about limited control of fonts may have merit if he is saying that as part of the presentation of his art, he would prefer to set the font type and size. Judging from the novels I've read, font selection rarely enters into the equation.
I travel for work so the ability to carry half a dozen novels and a bunch of reference books in my pocket is rather handy. To me the limitations of electronic reading technology are things like battery life, availability and selection, and DRM (which I've had no personal experience with yet because I don't have a Kindle). What's kept me from jumping on the Kindle bandwagon now that they're apparently available in Canada are some of the horror stories I've read of people losing books they've legitimately paid for. I don't want to pay full retail cost of a book to license it and be at the mercy of a nameless faceless entity that can revoke my license at any time.
I would find it a little less questionable if it was made clear in the summary that the story promoting a "for pay" site had been submitted by a representative of that site.
So I *did* RTFA and found it was fluff. So I read the linked PDF report to try and find out some details on what these gaping security holes in my favourite browser actually were. I did not want to have to eat crow over my repeated recommendations to us Firefox over IE because it was more secure. Well, there's plenty of space dedicated to reporting server side vulnerabilities, plenty on web apps, lots of repetition of how surprised they were to find Firefox and Safari so vulnerable...but nothing on what vulnerabilities. No mention of types of vulnerability, frequency, core browser, plug-ins, add-ins, versions, ZIP!
The 29 page report has one page that is mostly taken up with a lovely colourlful exploded pie chart. There is more space dedicated to advertising the Cenzic products and services than there is referencing browser vulnerabilities.
Yes, because file sharing destroyed the music business. There are now no original artists making music any more. I lament that sad day. it reminds me of the olden days, when we still had movies before the VHS machine destroyed that venerable business model. It went the same way as radio after the cassette tape.
Legit customers seem to still put a few dollars into these things, even when free is available.
Go stand over there with the RIAA, MPAA and Chicken Little and hang your head in shame. The sky is not falling.
Every time someone takes their kids outside they run the risk of those kids being exposed to god knows what, I don't see how online experiences are any different
You mean, like people shooting hookers, people shooting scary monsters, people stealing cars and recklessly running over pedestrians, etc? Not even in the worst parts of town, unless your town is somewhere in Iraq or another war-torn country. Games are seldom anything like real life.
I think you've missed the point. The programmed portions of the game are rated by the ESRB, it's the interaction with other people that are left out and so being discussed here.
The things you mention are reflected in the ratings with specific mention made of violence, drug use, sex, nudity, etc. In fact, consulting the ESRB website, the Grand Theft Auto games have been rated M for Mature or AO for Adult Only and their rating notes "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs". World of Warcraft is rated T for Teen, again with specific mention of "Blood and Gore, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence". Neither of these is rated as appropriate for a 7 year old
What the GP was talking about was the online experience of dealing with other PEOPLE that are playing the game. There is no effective way that I can think of to predetermine who else is playing the game and rate how they will behave. There is the potential to run into abusive people, drug users, criminals, sociopaths and just plain idiots. Speaking as a parent and a gamer, I don't see how this is any different from real life. I would not let a 7 year old play a game rated M; I would not let that 7 year old play WOW without supervision and I would not allow that 7 year old to roam the streets of a major city alone. A parent should work to teach their children a value system and try to instill in them the ability to determine their own opinions of right and wrong as they grow to be adults.
The ESRB rating system is certainly not without its flaws, but I don't think their choosing to not rate the interaction with other players and specifically say so is one of them.
What self respecting sysadmin is relying on the windows firewall to protect his enterprise's network? Sheesh, look after a government department of 30 users and when I took over 7 years ago my first task was to purchase and install a hardware firewall. Two years later a government-wide firewall was installed. Sure they do content blocking and block more ports than I am completely happy with, but it is handled at the ENTERPRISE level. Trying to manage a corporate network on an individual basis is insane. As a previous user noted, group policies could handle all of this. I am still convinced that a hardware firewall is the only reasonable choice. Hell, I have one at home for a 3 machine network!
So as I understand it, Perfect 10 contends that the image search function on Google is the equivalent of Google actually producing a web site of images. Since the images belong to Perfect 10, displaying them is copyright infringment. Part of the complaint seems also to revolve around a Google actually indexing and producing "text links" to sites where someone has copied their images and is redisplaying them. Perfect 10 has supplied a list of these URLs to Google and asked that they "remove the links".
So, seems simple to me, Google blocks all those sites that have Perfect 10 content as listed by Perfect 10, including the the Perfect 10 site. End of problem....oh, unless they were sort of banking on Google links getting new customers.
Hmmmm, yes, let's cut off the country that is the source of all the spam out there. Taking a quick look at the list maintained by Spamhaus here http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso that would be......the Unites States.
Of the top 200 listed, noted as being responsible for 80% of the spam on the internet, I see only 4 that are listed as coming from China.
Might want to be careful about what you wish for, you might get it. Your US-centric attitude shows you for the bigot you are and it ain't pretty.
This isn't really surprising. The tech started here in the US, so that made us #1. But the rural spread of our population makes market penetration quite difficult, thus resulting in countries with higher population densities pulling ahead. As Mark Twain once said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."
I'm sorry, greater population densities? Canada vs the US? You might want to take another look at your map. I live in the north here, and the company I used to work for http://www.ssimicro.com/ is currently working a project to put sattelite internet comms into remote communities of Nunavut; estimated population 28,000; estimated area 83,400 sq mi....
Slashdot Mirror
When I had an employer try to get me to sign a non-compete ( months after I stared working there), I said I would agree if he would agree not to hire my replacement when I left for the same period of time. If I can't replace my employer, he can't replace his employee. That ended that discussion. I left a few weeks later.
"controls the tools driver use, monitors their approval ratings and terminates their access to the system if their ratings fall..." So I'm a Slashdot employee now?
So you're saying ugliness should be deemed a disability too? Just because something is a factor discriminated against does not make it a disability. Being gay, female, old, young, Muslim, whatever is not a disability. It is a state of being.
If you don't want people to see you acting like a drunken idiot, wouldn't it be best to just not act like a drunken idiot? Seems easier than worrying about someone capturing it to video. He'll almost every phone out there can record video today. I've worked as a bouncer. I never understood the expectation that it was okay to act like an idiot because you were drunk. You are responsible for your actions - period. A bar is a public place. If you do something in a public place, the public will see you. Don't complain when a member of that public shares your asinine behaviour with the rest of the public who happened to be somewhere else and missed the originL performance.
Really? You find it strange that mainstream media is more interested in attacking the easy target (and let's face it, Assange really is easy to pick on) instead of the issues that have been raised? Investigating allegations of wrong doing requires a journalist; talking about a persons dress, commenting on his alleged actions and pointing out his obvious strange mannerisms or behaviour only takes a talking head. No shortage of those around but I fear real journalists may be in shorter supply.
If I'm looking at reading fiction, like a short story by Hemingway, how fast I can get through it isn't of interest to me. Speed of use becomes a factor if I am checking a reference manual, in which case full text searching is sure a lot easier than relying on an index or table of contents.
There are a lot of reasons I would consider an iPad, Kindle, or some other electronic reader (I use my iPod Touch to read books now) as an alternative to print and speed of completion isn't one of those considerations. I think this is really an oversimplified measure of "best", especially if one is trying to rate overall "usability" which this test proposes to assess.
At first, I was curious why it's even considered news worthy when Gates spends this kind of money on something.
A quick google search tells me that Bill Gates is worth over $50 billion, so $300,000 isn't even the merest fraction of what he's worth. This would be less than those people we've all met that toss away a penny because it's not worth having in their pocket. The Gates Foundation gives out over $1.5 billion a year but I don't recall seeing anything on ./ about that.
Then look at what it is he is doing with this pocket lint amount of cash - paying for RESEARCH into something. Did you read the article? He's not paying anyone to shoot salt water into the air, he's not even paying for research into shooting salt water into the air; he's paying for research into "converting salt water into tiny particles" and pumping that into the air. The navies of the world have been evaporating salt water to produce fresh water for decades (used to be my job). It should be noted that this isn't Gates' idea, it comes from a group of climate researching scientists who are concerned that governments are not going to do anything about global warming and greenhouse gases and don't think it is wise to sit around and wait.
I've certainly never considered myself a Bill Gates fanboi, but let's call this what it is, Gates bashing. Personally I despise a lot of the business practices I have seen reported about Microsoft in general, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Gates doesn't appear to be hiding out on a private island in the tropics enjoying his ill-gotten gains. He is considered one of the world's most generous philanthropists and in this case, appears to have done more research and put more energy and effort into considering global warming and what can be done about it than I would be prepared to believe most commenters in this forum have.
Ridicule the man for believing in pipe-dreams or buying snake oil if you feel the need, but I don't think you can vilify him for this one. You'll have to wait for the next version of MS Office for that.
Do adults do their jobs because "they are supposed to" or "out of the kindness of their own hearts."
I do my job because I love it.
I've been offered more money (sometimes *much* more) to do something else. Each time, I turned it down.
I believe the real test is, would you keep doing the job if they stopped paying you? No? Then you're probably not doing it because you love it.
Last night I saw an ad for Vonage on the iPhone, advertising that you can use the Vonage VOIP service on your iPhone now. To have not only the app ready to go but the TV ad as well took some lead time I should think. Developers certainly knew this was coming.
If I am reading TFA correctly, this was putting a stop to a pilot program. Shouldn't the lack of text-to-speech simply be a finding of the pilot on the way to a final decision on whether to use it or not? And of course, the pilot is being sponsored by the maker of the product, who would hear the concerns and respond to make sure their product meets ALL of the requirements. My question is, after a successful pilot, would they be providing free Kindles to all students or does this become another expense for the already cash strapped student?
Aren't the costs of post secondary education more discriminatory to a poor student than the availability of a Kindle is to a blind student?
I'm also curious about other classroom "visual aids": Charts, graphs, pictures, the widget the prof holds up to show the students...How have these been handled since starting to make serious efforts to accommodate students that are handicapped...disabled...physically challenged, whatever the politically correct term is now.
In my opinion, we do a disservice to these individuals by no longer recognizing that they are overcoming a challenge that other students face and are able to compete on an equal footing in spite of it.
Are there any slashdot readers that are themselves blind or deaf or have some other challenge they have had to deal with in a classroom who could weigh in on the topic with first hand experience? I honestly have no real personal point of reference. Other than slowly failing eyesight and hearing due to age, which is more in the pain-in-the-ass category than anything else, I've never had to deal with something like this.
I have to admit that on some level, I agree with some comments here that this is like blinding all the rest of the students to make things even. I argued once with a wheelchair-bound friend that it was not discrimination that kept him from being a firefighter, it was his inability to go up and down ladders.
Phishing attacks would presumably be trying to get some otherwise secured info from the victim. What would the victim of this attack provide in response to this email? Credit card info? Online banking credentials? Warcraft account info? sheesh. As someone above stated, the guy sent an email and it got through. No news there. This isn't phishing, it's spam. And not even good spam. I would bet more people would be trying to buy cheap viagra than join Bill's Linkedin.
How do you know his decision to do a criminal record check was "a sudden emotion-driven decision"? Actually, it sounds to me like a rational decision to make if he was concerned about the situation. I'm not debating how ethical the decision was here, just the rationality of it.
Drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels, grabbing his service revolver, driving over to the house at midnight and hammering on the door til someone answers and them threatening his life would qualify as sudden and emotion driven.
Wow, slashdot users certainly want to hold this guy to an amazingly high standard - one that I question whether they could meet themselves.
Twenty years ago he checked the criminal record of the man his son was going to be living with. Who here would not have done the same thing if they had the access? Twenty years ago he was censured for this act. So he made a mistake and paid the price. Heck after 20 years if he'd been to court and been fined for this, he'd probably have been able to have it removed from his record. He still made a point of disclosing it and then further clarified when he went back and read his notes on the incident and apologized for the discrepancy in the two accounts.
If you're seeking a saint to take a political appointment, I'd recommend not holding your breathe.
Sheesh.
Why ask an author about reading? A successful author may be a good source of information about writing, but that doesn't necessarily make him a good reader. [Obligatory car analogy] A mechanic may be able to drive, but I'd probably get better answers about driving from...well...a driver!
Now an author's complaint about limited control of fonts may have merit if he is saying that as part of the presentation of his art, he would prefer to set the font type and size. Judging from the novels I've read, font selection rarely enters into the equation.
I travel for work so the ability to carry half a dozen novels and a bunch of reference books in my pocket is rather handy. To me the limitations of electronic reading technology are things like battery life, availability and selection, and DRM (which I've had no personal experience with yet because I don't have a Kindle). What's kept me from jumping on the Kindle bandwagon now that they're apparently available in Canada are some of the horror stories I've read of people losing books they've legitimately paid for. I don't want to pay full retail cost of a book to license it and be at the mercy of a nameless faceless entity that can revoke my license at any time.
I would find it a little less questionable if it was made clear in the summary that the story promoting a "for pay" site had been submitted by a representative of that site.
So I *did* RTFA and found it was fluff. So I read the linked PDF report to try and find out some details on what these gaping security holes in my favourite browser actually were. I did not want to have to eat crow over my repeated recommendations to us Firefox over IE because it was more secure. Well, there's plenty of space dedicated to reporting server side vulnerabilities, plenty on web apps, lots of repetition of how surprised they were to find Firefox and Safari so vulnerable...but nothing on what vulnerabilities. No mention of types of vulnerability, frequency, core browser, plug-ins, add-ins, versions, ZIP!
The 29 page report has one page that is mostly taken up with a lovely colourlful exploded pie chart. There is more space dedicated to advertising the Cenzic products and services than there is referencing browser vulnerabilities.
This is isn't a report, it's a sales pitch.
Yes, because file sharing destroyed the music business. There are now no original artists making music any more. I lament that sad day. it reminds me of the olden days, when we still had movies before the VHS machine destroyed that venerable business model. It went the same way as radio after the cassette tape.
Legit customers seem to still put a few dollars into these things, even when free is available.
Go stand over there with the RIAA, MPAA and Chicken Little and hang your head in shame. The sky is not falling.
Every time someone takes their kids outside they run the risk of those kids being exposed to god knows what, I don't see how online experiences are any different
You mean, like people shooting hookers, people shooting scary monsters, people stealing cars and recklessly running over pedestrians, etc? Not even in the worst parts of town, unless your town is somewhere in Iraq or another war-torn country. Games are seldom anything like real life.
I think you've missed the point. The programmed portions of the game are rated by the ESRB, it's the interaction with other people that are left out and so being discussed here.
The things you mention are reflected in the ratings with specific mention made of violence, drug use, sex, nudity, etc. In fact, consulting the ESRB website, the Grand Theft Auto games have been rated M for Mature or AO for Adult Only and their rating notes "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs". World of Warcraft is rated T for Teen, again with specific mention of "Blood and Gore, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence". Neither of these is rated as appropriate for a 7 year old
What the GP was talking about was the online experience of dealing with other PEOPLE that are playing the game. There is no effective way that I can think of to predetermine who else is playing the game and rate how they will behave. There is the potential to run into abusive people, drug users, criminals, sociopaths and just plain idiots. Speaking as a parent and a gamer, I don't see how this is any different from real life. I would not let a 7 year old play a game rated M; I would not let that 7 year old play WOW without supervision and I would not allow that 7 year old to roam the streets of a major city alone. A parent should work to teach their children a value system and try to instill in them the ability to determine their own opinions of right and wrong as they grow to be adults.
The ESRB rating system is certainly not without its flaws, but I don't think their choosing to not rate the interaction with other players and specifically say so is one of them.
What self respecting sysadmin is relying on the windows firewall to protect his enterprise's network? Sheesh, look after a government department of 30 users and when I took over 7 years ago my first task was to purchase and install a hardware firewall. Two years later a government-wide firewall was installed. Sure they do content blocking and block more ports than I am completely happy with, but it is handled at the ENTERPRISE level. Trying to manage a corporate network on an individual basis is insane. As a previous user noted, group policies could handle all of this. I am still convinced that a hardware firewall is the only reasonable choice. Hell, I have one at home for a 3 machine network!
Actually, 'irregardless' *is* a word.
It is if you are American, anyway. Have a look at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=IRREGARDL ESS
...because the urge to correct someone who feels the need to correct people is just too entertaining to pass up!
So as I understand it, Perfect 10 contends that the image search function on Google is the equivalent of Google actually producing a web site of images. Since the images belong to Perfect 10, displaying them is copyright infringment. Part of the complaint seems also to revolve around a Google actually indexing and producing "text links" to sites where someone has copied their images and is redisplaying them. Perfect 10 has supplied a list of these URLs to Google and asked that they "remove the links". So, seems simple to me, Google blocks all those sites that have Perfect 10 content as listed by Perfect 10, including the the Perfect 10 site. End of problem....oh, unless they were sort of banking on Google links getting new customers.
Hmmmm, yes, let's cut off the country that is the source of all the spam out there. Taking a quick look at the list maintained by Spamhaus here http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso that would be......the Unites States. Of the top 200 listed, noted as being responsible for 80% of the spam on the internet, I see only 4 that are listed as coming from China. Might want to be careful about what you wish for, you might get it. Your US-centric attitude shows you for the bigot you are and it ain't pretty.