As a long-time Mac (and PC) user myself, I've been known to give someone a "simplified version" of the truth, telling them "you won't have any virus or spyware problems on a Mac".
It's not that I'm some clueless user who doesn't know better. It's that I have a pretty good idea of what the individual does with and expects from their computer. Judging by that, and knowing they're not a very "technical" user to begin with, I know that practically speaking, they really aren't going to need to worry about infections on their Mac.
(So far, just about all of the trojan horses and viruses people mentioned for OS X involved downloading files of unknown origins, or running something you received in an unsolicited email. When you have a user who is already scared to open any email at all from people he/she doesn't know, they're hopefully in good shape there. They're certainly not savvy enough to fire up bittorrent and start seeking out pirated software, either.)
Let me first throw out everyone's favorite acronym: IANAL
That being said, I used to do on-site service and consulting work for a number of area law firms, and saw several different backup strategies they employed.
Where I saw the online storage concept being put to best use was for email. The law offices I've seen who tried to run their own mail server, in-house, were *always* putting their data at some level of risk of loss.
In some cases, you had firms using Novell Groupwise as their messaging system, a leftover from bygone days when Novell was the "end all, be all" of servers and reliability. The problem, there, is, the Novell servers were so darn reliable, they tended to be largely forgotten and unmaintained over the years. The I.T. people who first installed and configured them are long gone, and very few people have expertise in Novell issues anymore. The hardware is usually getting quite old, and the motherboard, CPU, RAM and everything else comprising the server could potentially fail at any time.
In other cases, a firm might have been using Exchange and Outlook, but usually lacked a real, full-time sysadmin on staff. One of the lawyers who was deemed most "computer savvy" was given the task of doing the adds, moves and changes -- and they assumed they could just "call a place for help" if anything major went wrong.
These scenarios all mean a catastrophic loss of mail folders is quite possible, really. (What if that backup tape they've been telling you to keep swapping each night as "insurance" is actually not backing up half your stuff properly anymore? What if you need some selected stuff recovered from a long-deleted email account? Are you sure you even know how to get that back without erasing anything else?)
If a firm outsources their email to a hosted Exchange server with a competent business that keeps archival backups for them, I'd say that's a superior option to most others in reality. (May sound "scary" in theory, having confidential info "out there" on someone else's server, etc. etc. But if you can't/won't invest in real I.T. workers and the infrastructure to protect it properly, in-house, I think it's really much less risky.)
I think you just made a really important point that needs to be modded up. (I'm going to settle for commenting instead though.)
A high GPA isn't everything... In fact, I'd argue that it's quite overrated.
A truly "well balanced" individual is quite likely someone who got at least "average" grades in school, while devoting a lot of time to social skills as well.
In the "real world", it's every bit as much "who you know" as "what you know" that determines your fate. If you happen to excel in a very specific area that's in high demand? Then yes, you might be able to get away with being a total "loner" and social misfit, while still earning a great salary. Even so, life shouldn't be all about the money.....
I don't doubt that some students waste too much time on Facebook. It's loaded with "fun but useless" stuff to do. (I'm still wasting time myself with this silly "Farm Town" game. It's like a really BAD Sim City or something... but keeps you hooked because you have friends playing too who count on you to help tend their farms, etc.) But I still think no study of Facebook's impact on students would be complete without researching the possible GOOD it did some of them too? How many people got jobs with the help of Facebook contacts? How many were given useful advice that helped them with a project they were doing? Did anyone get venture capital money for a start-up business thanks to Facebook contacts and communications, perhaps?
Fine, but my issue with this is: It's NOT government's job to issue business loans!
We've gotten into that mentality with all the "exceptions" created like Fannie Mae and Sallie Mae, but look where those have gotten us? Skyrocketing costs for college tuition and the housing crisis!
If Tesla Motors wants a loan, they should pursue normal channels of venture capital or a bank loan. If the current economy makes those too difficult? I'm sorry about that -- but that's no excuse for trying to bypass the current system we have in place. I needed to buy a new car and got stuck paying way too high of an interest rate myself, thanks to banks being exceptionally "tight" with lending right now. I wasn't able to just run to the federal government and receive a more favorable loan. Why should a business like Tesla Motors get special treatment either?
People *do* complain about school loans! Universities have gotten away with hugely inflating the cost of tuition, simply because they figured out people can get a loan that big.
Maybe I have too much faith in people or something? But my first thought was, "Who the hell WOULD pay anything for an extra queen in a game of chess, or for some extra letter E's in Scrabble?"
I just don't see what the big "thrill" is in winning a game, when you know you didn't do so by the same rules your opponents were playing by?
That's like rejoicing in victory in a war where your enemy came after you with flyswatters and you mowed them all down with tanks.
If you threw in financial motivations to win, then I might understand it. (Let's say, for example, winning this Scrabble tournament would give you a quick $25,000. Then, I bet a LOT of people might be happy to pay a few bucks under the table for some spare, choice letter tiles.) In that case, you're talking about the money becoming the primary motivator, NOT the sense of achievement itself that would come with winning.
But generally, with a game like WoW, you don't get PAID to play well. You PAY for the privilege of using it in the first place!
Seriously, I don't know if there's more to the story you cited or not - but there's definitely a "1,000lb. gorilla in the closet" in America, in the form of "political correctness" and "harassment in the workplace" issues.
I've always thought that it's totally unnecessary to require "training videos" and the like (usually made by some attorney for whom the whole thing is self-serving, and yet they STILL charge a bunch of money for the videos). Anyplace else a person goes in public, he/she has a concept of what is "offensive" to him/her and what isn't.. He/she also knows how to make judgement calls about whether or not the "harassment" warrants simply shrugging it off/ignoring it, saying something back to the offender, or taking things further (legal actions, etc.). Why do we pretend we've suddenly lost ALL common sense when we enter the workplace?
What DOES happen, time and time again, is some disgruntled employee watches this stuff and gets ideas of all sorts of ways to potentially file a lawsuit and get "revenge" on someone else they dislike.
The alcohol thing is really no different. We assume that once you're of legal drinking age, you're able to make rational decisions about where and when to drink, and how much to consume. Yet we have these "taboos" in the workplace about it.... People won't order a beer over lunch anymore, out of plain "fear of the unknown". Will someone smell it on your breath later, and use it as a way to undermine some project you're working on? Will they run to Human Resources and make baseless claims that you're a "drunk"? Who wants to risk it?
One of the biggest reasons to have a specific domain name is because it's memorable enough and relevant enough so people will use it in lieu of a search engine.
(EG. If I don't know the URL for McDonalds restaurants, am I going to Google for it, or would I just try www.mcdonalds.com first?)
When you make the TLD an "anything goes" deal, vs. a distinct few possibilities - you make it MUCH harder for people to find you that way. (Initially, people will keep trying.com, knowing that's the "standard"... and as time goes on, all the people registering random, new TLDs will cause those.com based searches to be increasingly worthless. They'll go back to doing searches for you, vs. taking random stabs as to what TLD you might be under.)
Actually, I have a suspicion that with Microsoft's way of viewing their internal accounting, XP is no longer a "cash cow" at all.
I have no proof of this, since I'm not privy to any of their internal workings or memos - but I do see a lot of evidence to back it up.
For example, when you call in to Microsoft to activate a copy of Windows XP by telephone, you usually just reach an automated system with voice recognition capabilities, vs. a live human. You can go through the entire process without ever speaking to a real person. (It actually asks you the famous "questions", like "How many computers is this product installed on?" and "Have there been any major hardware changes to your platform since the last time Windows was installed?", and decides if it will re-activate an existing key based on your responses.)
Microsoft doesn't shuttle off these "anti piracy" measures to automated systems unless they feel it's only to support a "legacy product" that's no longer considered important enough to protect with the "higher level" of protection of interacting with a real customer service person.
I could easily see where their viewpoint might be; We already recouped our costs many times over for the XP product, and most new XP buyers are only buying heavily discounted licenses intended for refurbished machines, OEMs, etc. The money spent on manpower to keep supporting it is now just a net "negative" for us, vs. focusing on Vista and Windows 7, which will command higher retail prices on many licenses sold, and which still need to recoup their development costs ASAP.
As strongly as I oppose most copyright legislation, consider myself a proponent of p2p sharing protocols and networks, and despise bandwidth monitoring/limiting -- I don't think we really have a story here?
If you take a job that consists of reviewing movies and writing about the "entertainment industry", it should be no surprise they'd let you go if you started reviewing something before they said it was "ready" for viewing. If they wanted a writer to write a "pre-release review" of some of their work, they'd provide him/her an advance copy.
That being said, it sounds like Fox is currently debating whether or not they want to fire the guy over it anyway? Seems clear they're in the right if they do - but they may now be afraid of making a "martyr for the cause" out of him, that would encourage even more sharing around of leaked out, unfinished movies.
WHY do people continue to think it's ok for the federal government to barge in and start seizing things willy-nilly, before any charges are filed - and disrupting business for people who have NOTHING to do with what they're after??
Additionally, it's well known that the big telcos can't be 100% trusted when it comes to "fees owed"! I agree that we don't have enough facts yet to say exactly what's going on, but I choose to err on the side of the company intruded upon, right now. One only has to look at their OWN monthly telco bill from someone like AT&T to see how shady they are about raising prices in the form of "taxes", "tariffs" and impossible to decipher fees. Or look at the contracts they lock people into for as long as 5 years at a time for a simple T1 circuit, only to charge insane fees to break the contract if the circuit no longer meets the needs or best interests of the buyer. (And yes, I realize nobody forces anyone to sign a contract -- but all too often, AT&T and one of their circuits provides the ONLY reasonable way for a given place to get connected to the Internet, or to run their PBX system, thanks to their physical location.)
None of this even touches on AT&T's willingness to stomp on our collective privacy rights with the wiretapping nonsense!
Yep... and as I think I posted once before in another Slashdot topic, I actually work with a guy who used to be an engineer at the firm that was ordered to make some piping for the Three Mile Island reactor, on a "rush" basis, when the problems first started there.
He claims he spoke with people at the reactor site, asking them "How could something like this happen in the first place?" and was taken off to the side, and told that it would take a very specific sequence of adjustments to a number of valves to cause what happened. He replied, "Well, that doesn't sound very probable that could happen by accident?" He was then told that, "Yes, although it COULD theoretically happen, it seems HIGHLY improbable. It's also worth considering that the China Syndrome movie was just released in theaters shortly before this happened."
So in short, seems very possible it was caused by someone wishing to sabatoge the project as much as anything.
I'd agree with you, but also point out that one issue people typically have with this is the lack of documentation on said command-line configuration.
I often see "power tips" and the like on how to enable some OS X behavior that's not an option in their GUI. So far, just about every time I've run across one of these, it also follows that if Apple intentionally left the option out of the GUI, they also left the option undocumented. Someone had to comb through settings files and "play around" to discover it initially....
EG. Have you ever wanted Apple's "Front Row" software to default to opening on a second display instead of the primary one? Yep, doable with a console command, but hardly documented!
Except, as it's already been said here, Macs have never prevented a person from doing RAM upgrades to them. (Often, it's easier than doing on one a comparable Windows machine, since Apple does things like putting in "access doors" you remove with 1 or 2 screws, vs. taking a whole case apart to get to memory slots.)
I've never seen a Mac that couldn't receive a hard drive upgrade either. They use the same drives as any other PC. An all-in-one form-factor like the iMac might require more effort to get to it, but same issue with ANY all-in-one, like an HP TouchSmart.
Granted, that situation with the iPod and Apple dropping firewire support left a few people hanging. (They've made a few people unhappy with the decision to eliminate the firewire port on the consumer aluminum Macbooks now too.) But IMHO, that sort of thing comes with the territory with computer technology anyway. (EG. I have a $200+ high-end AGP video card that I only got to use twice because the motherboard I bought it for died, and everything after that has been PCI express instead. Should I get angry with Intel for not producing boards with AGP slots anymore?)
I was just reading an article about the growing market for high-cost luxury goods of all sorts in China, almost exclusively purchased by political figures as gifts for each other.
Apparently, although much of this gift-giving to earn political favors is technically "illegal", it's standard practice to overlook it if you're a political figure in good standing.
There's an especially great demand for designer goods that don't have obvious logos or labels, making them look like they're "showing off" their branding. They want the receiver of the gift to notice, after the fact, how costly and top-tier the gift was, without every photographer and witness of the gift exchanging process to know at a glance.
Truthfully, I have to question just how important the "expandability" really is for most people anyway?
There was a time when this was a *huge* deal, but as technology has advanced, I've watched a lot more consolidation.
EG. Back in the days of my Intel 486 motherboard, even the serial and parallel ports were on cards, and I had such options as upgrading a basic 8-bit or 16-bit ISA I/O card with a more capable VESA local-bus version. Now, every PC motherboard you can find has all the ports built right onto it, permanently.
Same goes for sound cards. Remember when *everybody* who was remotely into gaming went out and bought the latest Soundblaster offering (or maybe a "Gravis Ultrasound" or something)? Now, you get full Dolby surround capable sound and often, even optical outputs right on the motherboards.
On the Mac side, I even remember some people arguing they "needed" to go with a PowerMac G5 tower or Mac Pro tower vs. an iMac, because those expansion slots were so critical. Yet, show me how often you see a Mac tower with expansion cards installed in it these days? At least in the days of the G4 towers, you often had an Adaptec SCSI board in there for somebody's scanner, or maybe a card that added more USB ports.
And look at the Windows users who brag about their hardware's superiority, all because they can "upgrade with faster CPUs and video cards". Nice, in theory, but by the time they're ready for that new video or CPU? Most likely, the pin architecture has changed again, rendering the socket they've got unsuitable for that new processor... or maybe their power supply can't put out the wattage required for that new video board, or ?? You quickly realize it makes more sense to sell the whole machine and start over with a whole new one.
So Apple may just be doing this the sensible way, anyway.
I completely agree with you, and it's one reason I shunned the older MacOS versions for so long.
(I even remember the days of Windows '95 coming out as a brand new product. Many of us questioned if it really made sense to operate inside that environment ALL the time, as opposed to the Windows 3.x model, where you started out in MS-DOS, and could launch Windows on-demand, and quit back to DOS again.)
I think the plan with MacOS, though, was to provide a more friendly and usable environment for the "masses", with the understanding that some functionality and "power" would be lost in the process. Even today, you see MANY computer users who barely want to do anything with the machine besides launch one of several programs they use. They simply wouldn't miss a lack of a command line.
Something like they did with OS X is far better though... giving people *both* options.
No... they may just be referring to the overall picture of how Vista runs in tandem with the apps and drivers they use and need!
I agree with you. Given the right hardware, Vista itself will run rock solid on it. The problem is, nobody I know has much use for a desktop OS that doesn't run any other software on top of it, and has no peripherals attached to the system!
I have Vista "Home Premium, 64-bit edition" running on an HP TouchSmart PC at home right now. It behaves fine until I try to use my Canon LiDE 70 scanner with it. Then all hell breaks loose. Press one of the buttons on the front of the scanner, and you're liable to get endless dialog boxes popping open all over the screen - with no way out besides a reboot. Try to use the scanner from inside an application, and it may or may not work, depending on how they're accessing it. And yes, this is with the "Vista 64-bit driver" provided on Canon's web site!
I can see the "computer lab" simply evolving to better meet the needs of the modern student.
You're probably going to want to provide some comfortable workspaces where a laptop can be placed, and possibly offer amenities like a USB docking station with full-size keyboard, mouse and 20" or 22" LCD display attached. Network printers should be available as well.
You'd also want to have a number of desktop systems in the lab, loaded with specialized software packages needed for courses - but too expensive to expect students to buy for individual use. (EG. My ex-g/f had to use the SPSS statistical software for several of her psychology courses.)
News flash: people are impatient.....
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The Age of Speed
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Just from the Slashdot summary alone, I'm placing this book among the ranks of the useless "self improvement/self help" tripe out there.
People are generally impatient when they want things. This is part of the human condition. Technology allows many things to happen more quickly. People, in their impatience, leverage these technologies - and by collectively doing so time and time again, it becomes the "norm" or "standard". People stop planning as far ahead for important things, assuming this "faster delivery time" can be expected/counted on... and that gives us a perception that we're living in this "Age of Speed".
The thing is, you can read all of these books you want, in some attempt to "improve your own situation". But you can't change the fact that FedEx can deliver a package half way across the world overnight. You can't change the fact that email shows up in a recipient's inbox the second the sender clicks the "send" button. And you definitely can't change the thought processes of business owners who realized technology allows them to process orders at a faster pace, and therefore generate more income per day than they used to.
Ultimately? It comes down to you deciding how many "impatient people" you want to try to cater to. You do stand to gain financially by participating in the "rat race" -- but you can't keep running *all the time* without a break. You have to make your own lifestyle choices and compromises, to find a happy medium.
I've noticed a pretty drastic difference when traveling. If I visit many of the southern states in the US, or even some of the less populated parts of my own midwestern state, there's FAR less overall sense of urgency to get things done. "I'll get to it as soon as possible!" often means "some time before the week is over", vs. "We know you're expecting it today, so I'm trying to get somebody on it this afternoon or by tomorrow morning!"
The extended warranties and service plans would be FAR easier to sell if *those* things were honest in the first place!
Honestly, I tend to *like* the service plans, in theory, on many of the things I'd buy at a store like Office Depot. My resistance to them comes from being screwed over on multiple occasions when I went to actually USE one of them!
As one example, years ago, I purchased the 2 year extended plan for an HP inkjet printer I got for my work. I knew that out in the shop where it was used, they had a track record of breaking or wearing out the things on about a 1 1/2 year basis, so I figured it was a good gamble we'd use the plan. Sure enough, it broke down - so I called the ext. warranty toll-free number and tried to make a claim. Turns out the company went bankrupt and all warranties were transferred to a different firm. When I called THAT firm, they had "no record" of my warranty - and told me I needed to go to Office Depot and have them look it up in their file, and fax over proof.
I went through that whole fiasco, only to have the place refuse to pay to replace the printer with a comparable unit. Instead, they said all they were willing to do was mail me a check for the cost of the extended warranty and wash their hands of it!
As another example? I paid about $100 for a furniture warranty on a new sectional I bought at "Weekends Only". The microfiber started tearing in a corner, so I called to make a warranty claim. The place was *impossible* to work with though! They kept putting me on hold for 30 minutes or more and hanging up on me, or insisting the person handling the "Weekends Only" warranties was out of the office, and to "leave a voicemail". After leaving numerous messages, I got them to return my call a total of 2 times, both at odd hours (like late evenings, at my work number, when I was already long since back at home), so they left me messages simply saying they "tried to reach me" and to "give them a call back at my convenience". Never was able to get any service before the warranty expired, and I *still* have holes in my sectional!
Of course, nobody but Apple can say for sure, but everything I've been reading on rumor sites and so on points to the next iPhone being QUITE a bit more than just "same as the current 3G phone except more memory and a few bugfixes"!
Most likely, they'll be utilizing a new mobile processor with dual-cores. (Remember, Apple bought out a chip fab company a while back, and people were trying to figure out what purpose that served them? Well, that plant specializes in low-power CPUs for things like mobile phones, not computers.) This would probably solve the problem they've claimed has kept Adobe Flash support away... lack of CPU power to make it work 100%.
As someone who has owned both the first gen. and the 3G iPhones, I can also tell you the non-replaceable battery has been a total non-issue for me. What I did with the 3G was buying a "Powerslider" case which contains a 2nd. battery inside of it. The case slides around the phone, essentially docking the phone to it, and it drains the case battery before starting to use the iPhone's internal one. Yeah, the case was another $99 and it makes the phone thicker, but it also protects it and keeps it from slipping out of my hand....
Agreed on the memory card though. It's silly not to offer an SD slot on the thing....
Slashdot Mirror
As a long-time Mac (and PC) user myself, I've been known to give someone a "simplified version" of the truth, telling them "you won't have any virus or spyware problems on a Mac".
It's not that I'm some clueless user who doesn't know better. It's that I have a pretty good idea of what the individual does with and expects from their computer. Judging by that, and knowing they're not a very "technical" user to begin with, I know that practically speaking, they really aren't going to need to worry about infections on their Mac.
(So far, just about all of the trojan horses and viruses people mentioned for OS X involved downloading files of unknown origins, or running something you received in an unsolicited email. When you have a user who is already scared to open any email at all from people he/she doesn't know, they're hopefully in good shape there. They're certainly not savvy enough to fire up bittorrent and start seeking out pirated software, either.)
Let me first throw out everyone's favorite acronym: IANAL
That being said, I used to do on-site service and consulting work for a number of area law firms, and saw several different backup strategies they employed.
Where I saw the online storage concept being put to best use was for email. The law offices I've seen who tried to run their own mail server, in-house, were *always* putting their data at some level of risk of loss.
In some cases, you had firms using Novell Groupwise as their messaging system, a leftover from bygone days when Novell was the "end all, be all" of servers and reliability. The problem, there, is, the Novell servers were so darn reliable, they tended to be largely forgotten and unmaintained over the years. The I.T. people who first installed and configured them are long gone, and very few people have expertise in Novell issues anymore. The hardware is usually getting quite old, and the motherboard, CPU, RAM and everything else comprising the server could potentially fail at any time.
In other cases, a firm might have been using Exchange and Outlook, but usually lacked a real, full-time sysadmin on staff. One of the lawyers who was deemed most "computer savvy" was given the task of doing the adds, moves and changes -- and they assumed they could just "call a place for help" if anything major went wrong.
These scenarios all mean a catastrophic loss of mail folders is quite possible, really. (What if that backup tape they've been telling you to keep swapping each night as "insurance" is actually not backing up half your stuff properly anymore? What if you need some selected stuff recovered from a long-deleted email account? Are you sure you even know how to get that back without erasing anything else?)
If a firm outsources their email to a hosted Exchange server with a competent business that keeps archival backups for them, I'd say that's a superior option to most others in reality. (May sound "scary" in theory, having confidential info "out there" on someone else's server, etc. etc. But if you can't/won't invest in real I.T. workers and the infrastructure to protect it properly, in-house, I think it's really much less risky.)
I think you just made a really important point that needs to be modded up. (I'm going to settle for commenting instead though.)
A high GPA isn't everything... In fact, I'd argue that it's quite overrated.
A truly "well balanced" individual is quite likely someone who got at least "average" grades in school, while devoting a lot of time to social skills as well.
In the "real world", it's every bit as much "who you know" as "what you know" that determines your fate. If you happen to excel in a very specific area that's in high demand? Then yes, you might be able to get away with being a total "loner" and social misfit, while still earning a great salary. Even so, life shouldn't be all about the money.....
I don't doubt that some students waste too much time on Facebook. It's loaded with "fun but useless" stuff to do. (I'm still wasting time myself with this silly "Farm Town" game. It's like a really BAD Sim City or something ... but keeps you hooked because you have friends playing too who count on you to help tend their farms, etc.) But I still think no study of Facebook's impact on students would be complete without researching the possible GOOD it did some of them too? How many people got jobs with the help of Facebook contacts? How many were given useful advice that helped them with a project they were doing? Did anyone get venture capital money for a start-up business thanks to Facebook contacts and communications, perhaps?
Fine, but my issue with this is: It's NOT government's job to issue business loans!
We've gotten into that mentality with all the "exceptions" created like Fannie Mae and Sallie Mae, but look where those have gotten us? Skyrocketing costs for college tuition and the housing crisis!
If Tesla Motors wants a loan, they should pursue normal channels of venture capital or a bank loan. If the current economy makes those too difficult? I'm sorry about that -- but that's no excuse for trying to bypass the current system we have in place. I needed to buy a new car and got stuck paying way too high of an interest rate myself, thanks to banks being exceptionally "tight" with lending right now. I wasn't able to just run to the federal government and receive a more favorable loan. Why should a business like Tesla Motors get special treatment either?
You saved me some typing by posting that.
People *do* complain about school loans! Universities have gotten away with hugely inflating the cost of tuition, simply because they figured out people can get a loan that big.
Maybe I have too much faith in people or something? But my first thought was, "Who the hell WOULD pay anything for an extra queen in a game of chess, or for some extra letter E's in Scrabble?"
I just don't see what the big "thrill" is in winning a game, when you know you didn't do so by the same rules your opponents were playing by?
That's like rejoicing in victory in a war where your enemy came after you with flyswatters and you mowed them all down with tanks.
If you threw in financial motivations to win, then I might understand it. (Let's say, for example, winning this Scrabble tournament would give you a quick $25,000. Then, I bet a LOT of people might be happy to pay a few bucks under the table for some spare, choice letter tiles.) In that case, you're talking about the money becoming the primary motivator, NOT the sense of achievement itself that would come with winning.
But generally, with a game like WoW, you don't get PAID to play well. You PAY for the privilege of using it in the first place!
Seriously, I don't know if there's more to the story you cited or not - but there's definitely a "1,000lb. gorilla in the closet" in America, in the form of "political correctness" and "harassment in the workplace" issues.
I've always thought that it's totally unnecessary to require "training videos" and the like (usually made by some attorney for whom the whole thing is self-serving, and yet they STILL charge a bunch of money for the videos). Anyplace else a person goes in public, he/she has a concept of what is "offensive" to him/her and what isn't.. He/she also knows how to make judgement calls about whether or not the "harassment" warrants simply shrugging it off/ignoring it, saying something back to the offender, or taking things further (legal actions, etc.). Why do we pretend we've suddenly lost ALL common sense when we enter the workplace?
What DOES happen, time and time again, is some disgruntled employee watches this stuff and gets ideas of all sorts of ways to potentially file a lawsuit and get "revenge" on someone else they dislike.
The alcohol thing is really no different. We assume that once you're of legal drinking age, you're able to make rational decisions about where and when to drink, and how much to consume. Yet we have these "taboos" in the workplace about it.... People won't order a beer over lunch anymore, out of plain "fear of the unknown". Will someone smell it on your breath later, and use it as a way to undermine some project you're working on? Will they run to Human Resources and make baseless claims that you're a "drunk"? Who wants to risk it?
Not sure about embedding, but what about DailyMotion? They seem to be a "YouTube wanna-be" who is far less restrictive about their content.
One of the biggest reasons to have a specific domain name is because it's memorable enough and relevant enough so people will use it in lieu of a search engine.
(EG. If I don't know the URL for McDonalds restaurants, am I going to Google for it, or would I just try www.mcdonalds.com first?)
When you make the TLD an "anything goes" deal, vs. a distinct few possibilities - you make it MUCH harder for people to find you that way. (Initially, people will keep trying .com, knowing that's the "standard" ... and as time goes on, all the people registering random, new TLDs will cause those .com based searches to be increasingly worthless. They'll go back to doing searches for you, vs. taking random stabs as to what TLD you might be under.)
Actually, I have a suspicion that with Microsoft's way of viewing their internal accounting, XP is no longer a "cash cow" at all.
I have no proof of this, since I'm not privy to any of their internal workings or memos - but I do see a lot of evidence to back it up.
For example, when you call in to Microsoft to activate a copy of Windows XP by telephone, you usually just reach an automated system with voice recognition capabilities, vs. a live human. You can go through the entire process without ever speaking to a real person. (It actually asks you the famous "questions", like "How many computers is this product installed on?" and "Have there been any major hardware changes to your platform since the last time Windows was installed?", and decides if it will re-activate an existing key based on your responses.)
Microsoft doesn't shuttle off these "anti piracy" measures to automated systems unless they feel it's only to support a "legacy product" that's no longer considered important enough to protect with the "higher level" of protection of interacting with a real customer service person.
I could easily see where their viewpoint might be; We already recouped our costs many times over for the XP product, and most new XP buyers are only buying heavily discounted licenses intended for refurbished machines, OEMs, etc. The money spent on manpower to keep supporting it is now just a net "negative" for us, vs. focusing on Vista and Windows 7, which will command higher retail prices on many licenses sold, and which still need to recoup their development costs ASAP.
As strongly as I oppose most copyright legislation, consider myself a proponent of p2p sharing protocols and networks, and despise bandwidth monitoring/limiting -- I don't think we really have a story here?
If you take a job that consists of reviewing movies and writing about the "entertainment industry", it should be no surprise they'd let you go if you started reviewing something before they said it was "ready" for viewing. If they wanted a writer to write a "pre-release review" of some of their work, they'd provide him/her an advance copy.
That being said, it sounds like Fox is currently debating whether or not they want to fire the guy over it anyway? Seems clear they're in the right if they do - but they may now be afraid of making a "martyr for the cause" out of him, that would encourage even more sharing around of leaked out, unfinished movies.
WHY do people continue to think it's ok for the federal government to barge in and start seizing things willy-nilly, before any charges are filed - and disrupting business for people who have NOTHING to do with what they're after??
Additionally, it's well known that the big telcos can't be 100% trusted when it comes to "fees owed"! I agree that we don't have enough facts yet to say exactly what's going on, but I choose to err on the side of the company intruded upon, right now. One only has to look at their OWN monthly telco bill from someone like AT&T to see how shady they are about raising prices in the form of "taxes", "tariffs" and impossible to decipher fees. Or look at the contracts they lock people into for as long as 5 years at a time for a simple T1 circuit, only to charge insane fees to break the contract if the circuit no longer meets the needs or best interests of the buyer. (And yes, I realize nobody forces anyone to sign a contract -- but all too often, AT&T and one of their circuits provides the ONLY reasonable way for a given place to get connected to the Internet, or to run their PBX system, thanks to their physical location.)
None of this even touches on AT&T's willingness to stomp on our collective privacy rights with the wiretapping nonsense!
Yep ... and as I think I posted once before in another Slashdot topic, I actually work with a guy who used to be an engineer at the firm that was ordered to make some piping for the Three Mile Island reactor, on a "rush" basis, when the problems first started there.
He claims he spoke with people at the reactor site, asking them "How could something like this happen in the first place?" and was taken off to the side, and told that it would take a very specific sequence of adjustments to a number of valves to cause what happened. He replied, "Well, that doesn't sound very probable that could happen by accident?" He was then told that, "Yes, although it COULD theoretically happen, it seems HIGHLY improbable. It's also worth considering that the China Syndrome movie was just released in theaters shortly before this happened."
So in short, seems very possible it was caused by someone wishing to sabatoge the project as much as anything.
I'd agree with you, but also point out that one issue people typically have with this is the lack of documentation on said command-line configuration.
I often see "power tips" and the like on how to enable some OS X behavior that's not an option in their GUI. So far, just about every time I've run across one of these, it also follows that if Apple intentionally left the option out of the GUI, they also left the option undocumented. Someone had to comb through settings files and "play around" to discover it initially....
EG. Have you ever wanted Apple's "Front Row" software to default to opening on a second display instead of the primary one? Yep, doable with a console command, but hardly documented!
Except, as it's already been said here, Macs have never prevented a person from doing RAM upgrades to them. (Often, it's easier than doing on one a comparable Windows machine, since Apple does things like putting in "access doors" you remove with 1 or 2 screws, vs. taking a whole case apart to get to memory slots.)
I've never seen a Mac that couldn't receive a hard drive upgrade either. They use the same drives as any other PC. An all-in-one form-factor like the iMac might require more effort to get to it, but same issue with ANY all-in-one, like an HP TouchSmart.
Granted, that situation with the iPod and Apple dropping firewire support left a few people hanging. (They've made a few people unhappy with the decision to eliminate the firewire port on the consumer aluminum Macbooks now too.) But IMHO, that sort of thing comes with the territory with computer technology anyway. (EG. I have a $200+ high-end AGP video card that I only got to use twice because the motherboard I bought it for died, and everything after that has been PCI express instead. Should I get angry with Intel for not producing boards with AGP slots anymore?)
I was just reading an article about the growing market for high-cost luxury goods of all sorts in China, almost exclusively purchased by political figures as gifts for each other.
Apparently, although much of this gift-giving to earn political favors is technically "illegal", it's standard practice to overlook it if you're a political figure in good standing.
There's an especially great demand for designer goods that don't have obvious logos or labels, making them look like they're "showing off" their branding. They want the receiver of the gift to notice, after the fact, how costly and top-tier the gift was, without every photographer and witness of the gift exchanging process to know at a glance.
Agreed!
My old house had 40 year old crank-type windows that were very drafty/leaky. They got plenty of condensation on them in the winter.
The least ventilated homes, IMO, are usually the "energy efficient" ones where expensive multi-pane, coated windows are used, etc. etc.
Truthfully, I have to question just how important the "expandability" really is for most people anyway?
There was a time when this was a *huge* deal, but as technology has advanced, I've watched a lot more consolidation.
EG. Back in the days of my Intel 486 motherboard, even the serial and parallel ports were on cards, and I had such options as upgrading a basic 8-bit or 16-bit ISA I/O card with a more capable VESA local-bus version. Now, every PC motherboard you can find has all the ports built right onto it, permanently.
Same goes for sound cards. Remember when *everybody* who was remotely into gaming went out and bought the latest Soundblaster offering (or maybe a "Gravis Ultrasound" or something)? Now, you get full Dolby surround capable sound and often, even optical outputs right on the motherboards.
On the Mac side, I even remember some people arguing they "needed" to go with a PowerMac G5 tower or Mac Pro tower vs. an iMac, because those expansion slots were so critical. Yet, show me how often you see a Mac tower with expansion cards installed in it these days? At least in the days of the G4 towers, you often had an Adaptec SCSI board in there for somebody's scanner, or maybe a card that added more USB ports.
And look at the Windows users who brag about their hardware's superiority, all because they can "upgrade with faster CPUs and video cards". Nice, in theory, but by the time they're ready for that new video or CPU? Most likely, the pin architecture has changed again, rendering the socket they've got unsuitable for that new processor ... or maybe their power supply can't put out the wattage required for that new video board, or ?? You quickly realize it makes more sense to sell the whole machine and start over with a whole new one.
So Apple may just be doing this the sensible way, anyway.
I completely agree with you, and it's one reason I shunned the older MacOS versions for so long.
(I even remember the days of Windows '95 coming out as a brand new product. Many of us questioned if it really made sense to operate inside that environment ALL the time, as opposed to the Windows 3.x model, where you started out in MS-DOS, and could launch Windows on-demand, and quit back to DOS again.)
I think the plan with MacOS, though, was to provide a more friendly and usable environment for the "masses", with the understanding that some functionality and "power" would be lost in the process. Even today, you see MANY computer users who barely want to do anything with the machine besides launch one of several programs they use. They simply wouldn't miss a lack of a command line.
Something like they did with OS X is far better though... giving people *both* options.
Would that mean people using notebook computers in airplanes should expect to see more errors than they do on the ground?
Or do the airplanes themselves shield enough of the alpha particles?
No ... they may just be referring to the overall picture of how Vista runs in tandem with the apps and drivers they use and need!
I agree with you. Given the right hardware, Vista itself will run rock solid on it. The problem is, nobody I know has much use for a desktop OS that doesn't run any other software on top of it, and has no peripherals attached to the system!
I have Vista "Home Premium, 64-bit edition" running on an HP TouchSmart PC at home right now. It behaves fine until I try to use my Canon LiDE 70 scanner with it. Then all hell breaks loose. Press one of the buttons on the front of the scanner, and you're liable to get endless dialog boxes popping open all over the screen - with no way out besides a reboot. Try to use the scanner from inside an application, and it may or may not work, depending on how they're accessing it. And yes, this is with the "Vista 64-bit driver" provided on Canon's web site!
I can see the "computer lab" simply evolving to better meet the needs of the modern student.
You're probably going to want to provide some comfortable workspaces where a laptop can be placed, and possibly offer amenities like a USB docking station with full-size keyboard, mouse and 20" or 22" LCD display attached. Network printers should be available as well.
You'd also want to have a number of desktop systems in the lab, loaded with specialized software packages needed for courses - but too expensive to expect students to buy for individual use. (EG. My ex-g/f had to use the SPSS statistical software for several of her psychology courses.)
Just from the Slashdot summary alone, I'm placing this book among the ranks of the useless "self improvement/self help" tripe out there.
People are generally impatient when they want things. This is part of the human condition. Technology allows many things to happen more quickly. People, in their impatience, leverage these technologies - and by collectively doing so time and time again, it becomes the "norm" or "standard". People stop planning as far ahead for important things, assuming this "faster delivery time" can be expected/counted on ... and that gives us a perception that we're living in this "Age of Speed".
The thing is, you can read all of these books you want, in some attempt to "improve your own situation". But you can't change the fact that FedEx can deliver a package half way across the world overnight. You can't change the fact that email shows up in a recipient's inbox the second the sender clicks the "send" button. And you definitely can't change the thought processes of business owners who realized technology allows them to process orders at a faster pace, and therefore generate more income per day than they used to.
Ultimately? It comes down to you deciding how many "impatient people" you want to try to cater to. You do stand to gain financially by participating in the "rat race" -- but you can't keep running *all the time* without a break. You have to make your own lifestyle choices and compromises, to find a happy medium.
I've noticed a pretty drastic difference when traveling. If I visit many of the southern states in the US, or even some of the less populated parts of my own midwestern state, there's FAR less overall sense of urgency to get things done. "I'll get to it as soon as possible!" often means "some time before the week is over", vs. "We know you're expecting it today, so I'm trying to get somebody on it this afternoon or by tomorrow morning!"
The extended warranties and service plans would be FAR easier to sell if *those* things were honest in the first place!
Honestly, I tend to *like* the service plans, in theory, on many of the things I'd buy at a store like Office Depot. My resistance to them comes from being screwed over on multiple occasions when I went to actually USE one of them!
As one example, years ago, I purchased the 2 year extended plan for an HP inkjet printer I got for my work. I knew that out in the shop where it was used, they had a track record of breaking or wearing out the things on about a 1 1/2 year basis, so I figured it was a good gamble we'd use the plan. Sure enough, it broke down - so I called the ext. warranty toll-free number and tried to make a claim. Turns out the company went bankrupt and all warranties were transferred to a different firm. When I called THAT firm, they had "no record" of my warranty - and told me I needed to go to Office Depot and have them look it up in their file, and fax over proof.
I went through that whole fiasco, only to have the place refuse to pay to replace the printer with a comparable unit. Instead, they said all they were willing to do was mail me a check for the cost of the extended warranty and wash their hands of it!
As another example? I paid about $100 for a furniture warranty on a new sectional I bought at "Weekends Only". The microfiber started tearing in a corner, so I called to make a warranty claim. The place was *impossible* to work with though! They kept putting me on hold for 30 minutes or more and hanging up on me, or insisting the person handling the "Weekends Only" warranties was out of the office, and to "leave a voicemail". After leaving numerous messages, I got them to return my call a total of 2 times, both at odd hours (like late evenings, at my work number, when I was already long since back at home), so they left me messages simply saying they "tried to reach me" and to "give them a call back at my convenience". Never was able to get any service before the warranty expired, and I *still* have holes in my sectional!
Of course, nobody but Apple can say for sure, but everything I've been reading on rumor sites and so on points to the next iPhone being QUITE a bit more than just "same as the current 3G phone except more memory and a few bugfixes"!
Most likely, they'll be utilizing a new mobile processor with dual-cores. (Remember, Apple bought out a chip fab company a while back, and people were trying to figure out what purpose that served them? Well, that plant specializes in low-power CPUs for things like mobile phones, not computers.) This would probably solve the problem they've claimed has kept Adobe Flash support away ... lack of CPU power to make it work 100%.
As someone who has owned both the first gen. and the 3G iPhones, I can also tell you the non-replaceable battery has been a total non-issue for me. What I did with the 3G was buying a "Powerslider" case which contains a 2nd. battery inside of it. The case slides around the phone, essentially docking the phone to it, and it drains the case battery before starting to use the iPhone's internal one. Yeah, the case was another $99 and it makes the phone thicker, but it also protects it and keeps it from slipping out of my hand....
Agreed on the memory card though. It's silly not to offer an SD slot on the thing....