Frankly, it seems to me (not having read this particular article, of course, but still...) that TigerDirect will pursue this a little bit, get their name inserted into the vernacular for a while, see a spike in web traffic, and then drop any further fight.
They're getting what they want right now - media coverage. Everyone here at/. knows who they are, but there are probably a bunch of other people out there who had never heard of TigerDirect until there was some news item about their spotlight-grabbing behavior (wait... spotlight? Sorry, Mr. Jobs, I won't let it happen again...)
Decide for yourself whether it's weaselish behavior or not, but it is a commonly used tactic to get some quick publicity (worst case, they get additional name recognition, best case, some judge actually allows the case and they get more). It doesn't really hurt Apple, per se (though their lawyers love this stuff more than they do, to be sure), and doesn't really enhance public opinion of TigerDirect. I'm sure it gets some new traffic to TigerDirect's site, though.
On a side note, the word 'poppycock' doesn't get used nearly enough anymore.
Controversial means that there was controversy. I agree that it wasn't particularly offensive on the ever-sliding scale of network TV, but it sure got a bunch of people's knickers in knots for some reason.
The article seems to indicate that Microsoft is treading fairly lightly here - don't get me wrong, I love a good MS bash as much as anyone, but it remains to be seen how this will work (whereas those of us who didn't receive it early will know how a certain OTHER OS works as of this Friday - sorry, couldn't resist). If what they say is true (everything is optional and controllable by the user, AND all data transmitted will be anonymous), it seems on the surface to be okay.
What is the larger issue, in my opinion, is the erosion of the line between what's yours and what's public. This in itself isn't harmful, but it introduces to the consumer market more technology that can eventually be abused.
That's not Microsoft's fault, though, and I don't know if it's avoidable. After all, if you restricted the invention of e-mail because it could be used to scam people, things would be very different today. I don't like the thought that it's Microsoft that we're trusting with this (all malice aside, they've exhibited a very skitchy idea of what's secure and what's not in the past), but the idea of more comprehensive error reporting in and of itself is a good one and one that will allow better development in the future.
Now, as has been brought up elsewhere here, how anonymous is this? In other words, if you're surfing kiddie porn and crash (and are dumb enough to submit the error report with content of your browser), can that be subpoenaed and traced back to you? Again, a valid question but not necessarily a problem with Microsoft.
I guess all I'm saying is that there are plenty of reasons to be pissed at Microsoft (and I cherish them all), but I think this particular instance is just a very interesting and worrisome ethical and legal issue and not specific to MS. And I guess all I'm asking is that we follow the lead of some of the posters here and stay away from the MS bashing this time. Both in our responses and in how we post these things in the first place - the original post quotes the article up to the scary bit, but then doesn't indicate the rest. Good way to start an animated thread on/., but not necessarily a good way to present a rational synopsis of an article.
Microsoft Quick Response 911 System 1) Open Emergency Explorer 2) Read the license agreement and select "I Agree" 3) Double-click on My Hemorrhage 4) Right-click on the diagram of the bleeding body and select your level of discomfort:
a) OK
b) not OK
c) start 5) click Submit 6) indicate that you are aware that information you submit over the Internet may be insecure and visible to third parties 7) using GPS, a list of emergency numbers in your area will be displayed.
a) 911 use your cell phone to call this number for emergency service.
Features not commonly used will be hidden - simply click the double caret (yes, it's a button) to briefly view your other options.
In the event of a system crash, the Microsoft crash reporter will open and ask you a few simple questions. The answers to these questions will be submitted to Microsoft and used to improve your emergency experiences in the future.
Definitely. These are completely uninspired - I can't imagine Apple sinking so quickly as to come out with any of these.
I was hoping for something exciting - I'm pretty disappointed in the results of a bunch of ostensibly high-end designers (albeit non-Apple employees, and forecasters at that) working on these things.
Why not cram the iPod into a shoe instead? Or perhaps eyeglasses? Or perhaps a pack of gum? (No, wait...)
So much of what's in the world now is a result of truly innovative and original design from Apple, going all the way back to windowing environments. I know they need to make a buck, too, but I worry that the iPod is becoming too much a part of their image - apparently that's about as far as these other designers could see, at any rate. It's a very nice mp3 player, but I would argue that it's not changing society the way other Apple innovations have. It's not the Walkman of our generation, as was said elsewhere in these posts. The Walkman made high-quality music genuinely portable and (relatively) polite for the first time - the transistor of its time. The iPod (or any mp3 player) is just a linear extension of the Walkman, now available thanks to new technology. (I'm purposely avoiding the word 'paradigm' here [as it drives me nuts and I can't use it without doing my Little Snob Dance and purposely mispronouncing it], but my point is that the iPod ain't a new one.)
The only reason people call the iPod innovative is not because it's an mp3 player or because it's a great new idea. It's because it's a solid product done right--minimal controls, good quality, solid design overall--which is sadly a pleasant surprise in consumer electronics these days. Doesn't hurt that's it's marketed so appealingly, too.
All that said, back to these short-sighted designs. There's nothing here that Sony couldn't do as well or better. Give me OS X on a watch, on the other hand (har har), and I'll be happy. Actually, I'd prefer a PDA - an OS X device the size of a Palm Pilot or Treo would be great.
'Course, brushed steel and perforated vents, as is the Mac look now, would put it back up over the weight of the Newton. And deafening case fans would be a must.
I do like Apple's recent switch toward low-cost computers - the Mac Mini is pretty cool and will bring Apple to a lot of homes that otherwise wouldn't have considered Macs. But they really need to keep the quality and innovation up while lowering costs, even if it takes longer to do that than it would to compromise one for the other.
And as I think about it now, the iPod will pay the bills while they do that. Okay, so maybe this Jobs guy knows what he's doing. I bet I can still eat more ice cream than him, though.
Just downloaded it and opened a WP9 document with no troubles. Give me a minute... yep, WP5.0 comes through fine, too. Granted, I don't really have anything with a bunch of formatting challenges (tables, images, etc.) - but it's just great to pull a WP document into OOo at all. This may tip the balance with a client who's kind of stuck on WordPerfect.
It starts very, very early, and I think that's what most people don't realize.
I'd agree that most people don't realize this - I think a lot of the confused kids (and current and future adults) in the world can be attributed to the indescriminate bombardment of their little minds with unranked or unscreened data. This is why we're being as careful as we can about what goes into her little brain. And while I do believe that we shouldn't try to remove all reference to objectionable things, I don't think a three-year-old needs to see news footage of tsunami-strewn bodies or car-bombed markets or whatever else. There's an element of common sense that is often very easy to ignore for the comfort of hard-and-fast rules or an anything-goes mentality.
As it happens, she hasn't come home with anything objectionable from school (outside of a couple of very typical testing-her-weary-parents things she's doing) or her grandparents (outside of some fart humor from my dad that is clouding [har har] the burp humor I'm teaching her). It's just that she calls things "cool" and has picked up some other mannerisms and conversational ornaments like that.
As it pertains to this kid and the video games though (it just occurred to me that there was a reason I started yammering on about my kid), there may well be an element of lax parenting there. Or, as another poster correctly pointed out, he could have done it anyway despite any amount of good and conscientious parenting. And if the latter is the case, I'd imagine that if it hadn't been GTA, it would have been something else (news, TV, other kids, history classes, behavior at home, or something else). But that says significantly more about this kid's malleability than it does about Grand Theft Auto.
And really, sometimes bad things just happen. Now that it's done and can't be reversed, all the money and effort being spent to find someone large and sue-able to blame for a very tragic event would be better spent trying to fix an obviously broken kid and help the families of the officers he killed.
(For the record: Personally, I stopped playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City because it creeped out my wife. But that's more along the lines of reward-based behavior modification than it is censorship. Also for the record, I hope I don't sound like the self-proclaimed perfect parent: for every thing I think I do right I do twenty things that backfire. I just hope to do it all with mindful good intentions. My wife, on the other hand, is a perfect parent.)
And Simpson's Road Rage made me drive like a madman, saying things like "outta my way, you useless tool."
No, wait, I was doing that for years before we got the Playstation.
But I couldn't agree more. I've got to say, it seems like 75% of my daughter's phrasing choices and cultural interests come from what she's heard people other than us say. Grandparents, teachers and friends at pre-school, Arthur, all seem to have rubbed off on her (granted, she's only three, but the pattern is already VERY noticeable.) And taken at face value, that could make it seem like society is raising our kid. But the ability to determine right from wrong, use the appropriate references to infer the proper information from the world around her, and treat other people with kindness and compassion regardless of the cultural references she uses to do so are all up to my wife and I. As is the ability to stand up and take responsibility for his actions rather than listening to some lawyer who wants to make him a pawn in his little windmill-fighting crusade against game companies.
This is not to say that I think this kid should be strung up by his thumbs for this - he's obviously ill and needs help. Let's assume for a minute that this dunderhead lawyer is right - the game did influence him. That indicates a very unhealthy and imprintable mind, not a game that needs to be removed from stores.
While this is kind of an absurd correlation, think about what would happen if all movies were censored that contain objectionable behavior (Blockbuster tried that a few years ago, as I recall, and it was met with some glee and mostly outrage). Trying to strike any reference to the bad parts of society leads to ignorance, not security.
As a resident of Chicago, I can say that this is just the latest silliness to come across the wire. I voted happily for Daley the first time, and grudgingly thereafter. Everything is angled toward revenue, restriction, rules, etc. Intentionally misleading parking restriction signs that allow for discretionary ticketing, arbitrary snow-related parking bans, very restrictive regulations against the Cubs doing anything to Wrigley while the Bears can turn Soldier Field into a parody of itself, Meigs Field being torn up under cover of darkness, and so on.
Millennium Park (scheduled to be finished at, well, the new millennium, but actually finished last year) was crazy overbudget, tied up traffic hopelessly on Michigan Avenue for several years, and all in all a burden on the city. This is not to say I don't think it was a great addition to Chicago - it's a fantastic, interesting, inventive park that's a blast to walk around in and explore. But there's something sadly unsurprising about the city's blindness on this one.
Public art is just that: public. And to tell residents who put up with the construction and whose tax dollars paid for the park (if not the bean itself - SBC paid for that, I believe) that they can't take pictures of it is bordering on criminal. Anyway, all legal issues aside, it's just impractical (and if you actually try it, expensive) to try to invoice every rubbernecking tourist with a camera in downtown Chicago. Daley, as near as I can tell, is beautifying Chicago strictly for how it will affect his legacy, not the quality of life of anyone who lives here.
Chicago's a beautiful city (it's MY favorite, at any rate), and Daley really did do a lot of great things recently to make it all come together. But here we are - there's nothing inherently wrong with the bean or the other cultural improvements made during the reign of the Latter Daley kingdom. But to take something that's finally giving something good to the residents of the city after a lot of cost and buttpain and turn it into yet another dumb distasteful battle that only serves the lawyers seems to be how too many things are going around here anymore.
Hells bells, The artist (or the artist now known as SBC - whatever) built a humongolous shiny bean in the middle of a public park - to expect people to not take pictures of it and, in addition, to try to keep them from doing it is more like performance art than legal angling.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, it seems to me (not having read this particular article, of course, but still ...) that TigerDirect will pursue this a little bit, get their name inserted into the vernacular for a while, see a spike in web traffic, and then drop any further fight.
/. knows who they are, but there are probably a bunch of other people out there who had never heard of TigerDirect until there was some news item about their spotlight-grabbing behavior (wait ... spotlight? Sorry, Mr. Jobs, I won't let it happen again ...)
They're getting what they want right now - media coverage. Everyone here at
Decide for yourself whether it's weaselish behavior or not, but it is a commonly used tactic to get some quick publicity (worst case, they get additional name recognition, best case, some judge actually allows the case and they get more). It doesn't really hurt Apple, per se (though their lawyers love this stuff more than they do, to be sure), and doesn't really enhance public opinion of TigerDirect. I'm sure it gets some new traffic to TigerDirect's site, though.
On a side note, the word 'poppycock' doesn't get used nearly enough anymore.
tea - Earl Grey, hot.
Controversial means that there was controversy. I agree that it wasn't particularly offensive on the ever-sliding scale of network TV, but it sure got a bunch of people's knickers in knots for some reason.
The article seems to indicate that Microsoft is treading fairly lightly here - don't get me wrong, I love a good MS bash as much as anyone, but it remains to be seen how this will work (whereas those of us who didn't receive it early will know how a certain OTHER OS works as of this Friday - sorry, couldn't resist). If what they say is true (everything is optional and controllable by the user, AND all data transmitted will be anonymous), it seems on the surface to be okay.
/., but not necessarily a good way to present a rational synopsis of an article.
What is the larger issue, in my opinion, is the erosion of the line between what's yours and what's public. This in itself isn't harmful, but it introduces to the consumer market more technology that can eventually be abused.
That's not Microsoft's fault, though, and I don't know if it's avoidable. After all, if you restricted the invention of e-mail because it could be used to scam people, things would be very different today. I don't like the thought that it's Microsoft that we're trusting with this (all malice aside, they've exhibited a very skitchy idea of what's secure and what's not in the past), but the idea of more comprehensive error reporting in and of itself is a good one and one that will allow better development in the future.
Now, as has been brought up elsewhere here, how anonymous is this? In other words, if you're surfing kiddie porn and crash (and are dumb enough to submit the error report with content of your browser), can that be subpoenaed and traced back to you? Again, a valid question but not necessarily a problem with Microsoft.
I guess all I'm saying is that there are plenty of reasons to be pissed at Microsoft (and I cherish them all), but I think this particular instance is just a very interesting and worrisome ethical and legal issue and not specific to MS. And I guess all I'm asking is that we follow the lead of some of the posters here and stay away from the MS bashing this time. Both in our responses and in how we post these things in the first place - the original post quotes the article up to the scary bit, but then doesn't indicate the rest. Good way to start an animated thread on
T
Microsoft Quick Response 911 System
1) Open Emergency Explorer
2) Read the license agreement and select "I Agree"
3) Double-click on My Hemorrhage
4) Right-click on the diagram of the bleeding body and select your level of discomfort:
a) OK
b) not OK
c) start
5) click Submit
6) indicate that you are aware that information you submit over the Internet may be insecure and visible to third parties
7) using GPS, a list of emergency numbers in your area will be displayed.
a) 911
use your cell phone to call this number for emergency service.
Features not commonly used will be hidden - simply click the double caret (yes, it's a button) to briefly view your other options.
In the event of a system crash, the Microsoft crash reporter will open and ask you a few simple questions. The answers to these questions will be submitted to Microsoft and used to improve your emergency experiences in the future.
Definitely. These are completely uninspired - I can't imagine Apple sinking so quickly as to come out with any of these.
...)
I was hoping for something exciting - I'm pretty disappointed in the results of a bunch of ostensibly high-end designers (albeit non-Apple employees, and forecasters at that) working on these things.
Why not cram the iPod into a shoe instead? Or perhaps eyeglasses? Or perhaps a pack of gum? (No, wait
So much of what's in the world now is a result of truly innovative and original design from Apple, going all the way back to windowing environments. I know they need to make a buck, too, but I worry that the iPod is becoming too much a part of their image - apparently that's about as far as these other designers could see, at any rate. It's a very nice mp3 player, but I would argue that it's not changing society the way other Apple innovations have. It's not the Walkman of our generation, as was said elsewhere in these posts. The Walkman made high-quality music genuinely portable and (relatively) polite for the first time - the transistor of its time. The iPod (or any mp3 player) is just a linear extension of the Walkman, now available thanks to new technology. (I'm purposely avoiding the word 'paradigm' here [as it drives me nuts and I can't use it without doing my Little Snob Dance and purposely mispronouncing it], but my point is that the iPod ain't a new one.)
The only reason people call the iPod innovative is not because it's an mp3 player or because it's a great new idea. It's because it's a solid product done right--minimal controls, good quality, solid design overall--which is sadly a pleasant surprise in consumer electronics these days. Doesn't hurt that's it's marketed so appealingly, too.
All that said, back to these short-sighted designs. There's nothing here that Sony couldn't do as well or better. Give me OS X on a watch, on the other hand (har har), and I'll be happy. Actually, I'd prefer a PDA - an OS X device the size of a Palm Pilot or Treo would be great.
'Course, brushed steel and perforated vents, as is the Mac look now, would put it back up over the weight of the Newton. And deafening case fans would be a must.
I do like Apple's recent switch toward low-cost computers - the Mac Mini is pretty cool and will bring Apple to a lot of homes that otherwise wouldn't have considered Macs. But they really need to keep the quality and innovation up while lowering costs, even if it takes longer to do that than it would to compromise one for the other.
And as I think about it now, the iPod will pay the bills while they do that. Okay, so maybe this Jobs guy knows what he's doing. I bet I can still eat more ice cream than him, though.
Just downloaded it and opened a WP9 document with no troubles. Give me a minute ... yep, WP5.0 comes through fine, too. Granted, I don't really have anything with a bunch of formatting challenges (tables, images, etc.) - but it's just great to pull a WP document into OOo at all. This may tip the balance with a client who's kind of stuck on WordPerfect.
And it looks nice, too.
I read my Win2000 SP4 EULA and found out that I owe THEM $1000. Those jerks still haven't cashed my check, either.
It starts very, very early, and I think that's what most people don't realize.
I'd agree that most people don't realize this - I think a lot of the confused kids (and current and future adults) in the world can be attributed to the indescriminate bombardment of their little minds with unranked or unscreened data. This is why we're being as careful as we can about what goes into her little brain. And while I do believe that we shouldn't try to remove all reference to objectionable things, I don't think a three-year-old needs to see news footage of tsunami-strewn bodies or car-bombed markets or whatever else. There's an element of common sense that is often very easy to ignore for the comfort of hard-and-fast rules or an anything-goes mentality.
As it happens, she hasn't come home with anything objectionable from school (outside of a couple of very typical testing-her-weary-parents things she's doing) or her grandparents (outside of some fart humor from my dad that is clouding [har har] the burp humor I'm teaching her). It's just that she calls things "cool" and has picked up some other mannerisms and conversational ornaments like that.
As it pertains to this kid and the video games though (it just occurred to me that there was a reason I started yammering on about my kid), there may well be an element of lax parenting there. Or, as another poster correctly pointed out, he could have done it anyway despite any amount of good and conscientious parenting. And if the latter is the case, I'd imagine that if it hadn't been GTA, it would have been something else (news, TV, other kids, history classes, behavior at home, or something else). But that says significantly more about this kid's malleability than it does about Grand Theft Auto.
And really, sometimes bad things just happen. Now that it's done and can't be reversed, all the money and effort being spent to find someone large and sue-able to blame for a very tragic event would be better spent trying to fix an obviously broken kid and help the families of the officers he killed.
(For the record: Personally, I stopped playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City because it creeped out my wife. But that's more along the lines of reward-based behavior modification than it is censorship. Also for the record, I hope I don't sound like the self-proclaimed perfect parent: for every thing I think I do right I do twenty things that backfire. I just hope to do it all with mindful good intentions. My wife, on the other hand, is a perfect parent.)
And Simpson's Road Rage made me drive like a madman, saying things like "outta my way, you useless tool."
No, wait, I was doing that for years before we got the Playstation.
But I couldn't agree more. I've got to say, it seems like 75% of my daughter's phrasing choices and cultural interests come from what she's heard people other than us say. Grandparents, teachers and friends at pre-school, Arthur, all seem to have rubbed off on her (granted, she's only three, but the pattern is already VERY noticeable.) And taken at face value, that could make it seem like society is raising our kid. But the ability to determine right from wrong, use the appropriate references to infer the proper information from the world around her, and treat other people with kindness and compassion regardless of the cultural references she uses to do so are all up to my wife and I. As is the ability to stand up and take responsibility for his actions rather than listening to some lawyer who wants to make him a pawn in his little windmill-fighting crusade against game companies.
This is not to say that I think this kid should be strung up by his thumbs for this - he's obviously ill and needs help. Let's assume for a minute that this dunderhead lawyer is right - the game did influence him. That indicates a very unhealthy and imprintable mind, not a game that needs to be removed from stores.
While this is kind of an absurd correlation, think about what would happen if all movies were censored that contain objectionable behavior (Blockbuster tried that a few years ago, as I recall, and it was met with some glee and mostly outrage). Trying to strike any reference to the bad parts of society leads to ignorance, not security.
Must have been an Intel horse.
As a resident of Chicago, I can say that this is just the latest silliness to come across the wire. I voted happily for Daley the first time, and grudgingly thereafter. Everything is angled toward revenue, restriction, rules, etc. Intentionally misleading parking restriction signs that allow for discretionary ticketing, arbitrary snow-related parking bans, very restrictive regulations against the Cubs doing anything to Wrigley while the Bears can turn Soldier Field into a parody of itself, Meigs Field being torn up under cover of darkness, and so on.
Millennium Park (scheduled to be finished at, well, the new millennium, but actually finished last year) was crazy overbudget, tied up traffic hopelessly on Michigan Avenue for several years, and all in all a burden on the city. This is not to say I don't think it was a great addition to Chicago - it's a fantastic, interesting, inventive park that's a blast to walk around in and explore. But there's something sadly unsurprising about the city's blindness on this one.
Public art is just that: public. And to tell residents who put up with the construction and whose tax dollars paid for the park (if not the bean itself - SBC paid for that, I believe) that they can't take pictures of it is bordering on criminal. Anyway, all legal issues aside, it's just impractical (and if you actually try it, expensive) to try to invoice every rubbernecking tourist with a camera in downtown Chicago. Daley, as near as I can tell, is beautifying Chicago strictly for how it will affect his legacy, not the quality of life of anyone who lives here.
Chicago's a beautiful city (it's MY favorite, at any rate), and Daley really did do a lot of great things recently to make it all come together. But here we are - there's nothing inherently wrong with the bean or the other cultural improvements made during the reign of the Latter Daley kingdom. But to take something that's finally giving something good to the residents of the city after a lot of cost and buttpain and turn it into yet another dumb distasteful battle that only serves the lawyers seems to be how too many things are going around here anymore.
Hells bells, The artist (or the artist now known as SBC - whatever) built a humongolous shiny bean in the middle of a public park - to expect people to not take pictures of it and, in addition, to try to keep them from doing it is more like performance art than legal angling.
NASA announced today its plan to recruit exclusively from the U.S. bobsled and luge teams.