That's a tricky one though. The best source I found (5 min google search) regarding the education on celebrities indicates a lack of higher education among many celebrities (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/s/starsandpo ls.htm). A doctoral degree is earned by those who not only demonstrate a solid understanding of their field, but also made a contribution to the field deemed worthy by their peers. Such an academic career generally involves being educated in other fields as well, forming a broad yet specialized education.
That's not to say that a doctor in computer science should be considered an expert on medicine, psychology, nutrition, etc. But I would consider his ability to research and separate fact from rumor to be more credible than that of a college drop out who happens to be popular.
I think the main problem is that of context. When dealing with scientific findings, all of the related information is important to understanding the science. It is impossible to get all of the information from a news article, and televised news is always so time-compressed and over emphasized that they seldom include any real scientific information.
Whenever someone tells you something that "everyone knows," ask how often everyone is an expert in anything.
I agree. Another really bad thing is how Microsoft treats people who report security flaws. The Mozilla folks admit their flaw and work to fix it, even THANKING people who find and report them. Microsoft has actually threatened lawsuits against people who report flaws to them if they report the same flaw publicly (read: first hand experience). This does not encourage a "white hat" community, nor does it make M$ want to fix problems fast since they can legally delay the public disclosure of a critical security flaw.
Actually Symantec does have a OSX version of Norton Antivirus, I've seen it on the shelf at the retail store I work at.
But as a friend of mine explained to me, writing a virus/worm for Windows is much easier and "can reach a larger audience" (his own words). So as you can imagine, Norton AV for OSX doesn't sell very well at all. In fact, it's the joke I use to close a Mac sale.
But seriously, the sad thing is that many people will buy this FUD and let it dissuade them from trying Firefox. I probably wouldn't otherwise think this, but I am constantly surprised at how many people buy our service plans.
... this is probably true. I am a salesman at a tech retailor, though not a good one since I keep suggesting free solutions to problems:). I am constantly amazed at how other sales reps can turn the shortcomings of a product into indespensible features quicker than a full marketing division.
Lets face it. People who are not technologically savvy will, by and large, eventually put their trust in the "lastest and greatest" trends and will eventually accept whatever the industry giants produce. It is similar to the situation of independant films. If one movie stars Tom Cruise (or say, M$FT), and another was made by a small group of people that nobody has heard of (for the sake of argument lets say any open source project), the result will be that they will be seen differently in the public eye. Sure a few get noticed and become great hits, but soon people will be going back to see the next multi-billion dollar premier. People can be funny like that. Though I guess most people don't find the bahhing of sheep to be funny.
I use Napster, and as far as I can tell I believe that I exist (though I have been wrong before...). It's actually not that bad of a service, save for the annoying limitations they put on the files. You cannot burn a song to a cd or transfer it to your average mp3 player (though I think there are now some Napster frendly ones). I believe that overall though, it is better than iTunes simply because you pay a flat fee per month to get access to all the songs you want instead of paying per song.
I have found that the wma's I downloaded from Napster are usually of a much better sound quality than the average mp3 you can find on a p2p network. Also, I hate it when files are recorded with different volume levels, a problem that I have faced several times. So yeah, I would say that there are a couple advantages to using napster over p2p.
Besides, I would guess this route is safer. Since there is no illegal network traffic at all and I very much doubt that any wave-out-capture application sends info on the files it is decoding, it would be very hard to get caught doing this unless your system gets confiscated or something of the like.
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That's a tricky one though. The best source I found (5 min google search) regarding the education on celebrities indicates a lack of higher education among many celebrities (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/s/starsandpo ls.htm). A doctoral degree is earned by those who not only demonstrate a solid understanding of their field, but also made a contribution to the field deemed worthy by their peers. Such an academic career generally involves being educated in other fields as well, forming a broad yet specialized education.
That's not to say that a doctor in computer science should be considered an expert on medicine, psychology, nutrition, etc. But I would consider his ability to research and separate fact from rumor to be more credible than that of a college drop out who happens to be popular.
I think the main problem is that of context. When dealing with scientific findings, all of the related information is important to understanding the science. It is impossible to get all of the information from a news article, and televised news is always so time-compressed and over emphasized that they seldom include any real scientific information.
Whenever someone tells you something that "everyone knows," ask how often everyone is an expert in anything.
I agree. Another really bad thing is how Microsoft treats people who report security flaws. The Mozilla folks admit their flaw and work to fix it, even THANKING people who find and report them. Microsoft has actually threatened lawsuits against people who report flaws to them if they report the same flaw publicly (read: first hand experience). This does not encourage a "white hat" community, nor does it make M$ want to fix problems fast since they can legally delay the public disclosure of a critical security flaw.
Actually Symantec does have a OSX version of Norton Antivirus, I've seen it on the shelf at the retail store I work at. But as a friend of mine explained to me, writing a virus/worm for Windows is much easier and "can reach a larger audience" (his own words). So as you can imagine, Norton AV for OSX doesn't sell very well at all. In fact, it's the joke I use to close a Mac sale. But seriously, the sad thing is that many people will buy this FUD and let it dissuade them from trying Firefox. I probably wouldn't otherwise think this, but I am constantly surprised at how many people buy our service plans.
... this is probably true. I am a salesman at a tech retailor, though not a good one since I keep suggesting free solutions to problems :). I am constantly amazed at how other sales reps can turn the shortcomings of a product into indespensible features quicker than a full marketing division.
Lets face it. People who are not technologically savvy will, by and large, eventually put their trust in the "lastest and greatest" trends and will eventually accept whatever the industry giants produce. It is similar to the situation of independant films. If one movie stars Tom Cruise (or say, M$FT), and another was made by a small group of people that nobody has heard of (for the sake of argument lets say any open source project), the result will be that they will be seen differently in the public eye. Sure a few get noticed and become great hits, but soon people will be going back to see the next multi-billion dollar premier. People can be funny like that. Though I guess most people don't find the bahhing of sheep to be funny.
I use Napster, and as far as I can tell I believe that I exist (though I have been wrong before...). It's actually not that bad of a service, save for the annoying limitations they put on the files. You cannot burn a song to a cd or transfer it to your average mp3 player (though I think there are now some Napster frendly ones). I believe that overall though, it is better than iTunes simply because you pay a flat fee per month to get access to all the songs you want instead of paying per song.
I have found that the wma's I downloaded from Napster are usually of a much better sound quality than the average mp3 you can find on a p2p network. Also, I hate it when files are recorded with different volume levels, a problem that I have faced several times. So yeah, I would say that there are a couple advantages to using napster over p2p. Besides, I would guess this route is safer. Since there is no illegal network traffic at all and I very much doubt that any wave-out-capture application sends info on the files it is decoding, it would be very hard to get caught doing this unless your system gets confiscated or something of the like.