The article in no way implies that only one machine was problematic. Machines at different locations (e.g. "African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale" and "Lemon City Library in Miami") and on different days exhibited problems.
Moreover, none of these calibration problems seem to have favored Republican candidates. Considering the small sample size, it's certainly possible that this is random, but I don't blame people for being suspicious.
So, "hardons" notwithstanding, there are definitely problems. Even if there is, indeed, no "right-wing conspiracy" involved, it's a serious issue that people are having so much trouble voting for the correct candidates. If these problems occur merely between steps during on-screen voting, imagine how many other problem must also be occurring at these and other locations between on-screen voting and actual vote tallying, especially when there is no voter-verified paper trail!
I'm a big fan of the Internets; like the President and most of you, I use the Google, shop online, etc. However, this certainly doesn't encourage me to support electronic voting.
I think the real solution to this mess is to nationalize the voting system. In the US every state and even every county has its own voting system, with different machines, voting dates, ballot fonts, software, etc. Either a large number of these areas need to voluntarily work together to get some large-scale, robust voting protocols (electronic or not), control of setting election protocols should be shifted to the national government, or the national government needs to step in and a) set some standards, and b) pony up some money to help finance the establishment of solid voting protocols that can be used nationwide.
Frankly, I think that this is a very positive way to use the idea of Google bombing. The whole point of PageRank is that people vote with their links and other expressions of interest in certain pages. So when people pull a prank like linking 'miserable failure' to Bush or Moore, this is just sort of silly and unimportant. But when people really want others to know about an article that exposes an important aspect of a political figure, and they all link to that article, that seems to be perfectly in line with the spirit of Google. What's wrong - that they all chose to use the same link text? That they decided to coordinate their efforts and focus public opinion on one particular article? How is that different from a campaign choosing specific words and talking points to drive home in stump speeches, press materials, etc.?
I think the fact that the person who started this went out of his way to focus on substantive articles from real newspapers does a lot to distance this from the sort of 'prank' it could have been. If this were all focused on a parody site, or they were doing something deceptive like linking "John Kyl" to the site of a child molester with the same or similar name, I think that would be irresponsible. But especially when the first few entries are still his senate biography, campaign site, and wikipedia entry, I don't see the problem with this.
Interestingly, since a few hours ago when I read the article in the Times and first Googled "Jon Kyl," the article in question has disappeared from the first couple pages. Is Google actually taking a hand here? It sure looks like something has happened.
I think the parent is correct in saying that Acid2 is about testing compliance with certain standards, regardless of whether they are related to correctly written code or handling code with errors in it. The GP is correct, however, in arguing that the poster doesn't know what the fsck (s)he's talking about. The Acid2 test is something that I wish all browsers passed, sure, but it is not some sort of W3C validator that determines whether or not your browser complies with each any every W3C standard or not. It tests "features [the W3C] consider[s] most important for the future of the web". So a browser could pass the Acid2 test and still fail at all sorts of other important things related to (X)HTML, CSS, etc.
Developing to standards isn't easy, sure, and it takes some effort to figure out the most accessible, standards-compliant way to do seemingly simple things like having a rollover menu or a multi-column layout, but it's not impossible, it is worth the time invested in that it does produce more understandable, semantic, accessible, forward-compatible code, as has been commented on elsewhere in the comments.
If you are doing your best to produce a semantic, accessible site, and run into a problem that after serious effort you can't seem to resolve in a standards-compliant way, so be it. Send an e-mail to some standards guru or whatever to ask for help, and then go ahead and put a couple invalid lines of code into your pages. If you figure out a standards-compliant alternative later, you can change it. But don't use this as an excuse for laziness or a lack of a real understanding for the reasons behind the movement for standards-compliant design. Sticking a "Valid XHTML 49.3" badge on your web site simply because it runs through the validator OK doesn't mean that you've done everything right, but don't think that the ignorance of some of those people indicates that the whole idea of web standards is flawed.
Validation not only is not the be-all-end-all, but it also shouldn't be. I say this as someone who strongly supports validating one's web sites. The reason I say this is because validators can only test so much, and so while they might be a useful starting point and/or test along the way, they cannot test everything. Even if something is technically valid, that does not mean that it accomplishes all of the goals of validation, such as being accessible regardless of the user's browser, disability, operating system, etc.
You're complaining about 45 cents? A friend of mine was just in London and said that a subway ride there is £3.50 ($6.45 US), whereas in New York City it's $2, and in many other cities it is less (in Boston, which I've heard has the highest cost of living of any city in the United States, a ride is $1.25).
If you're lucky, airfare isn't also over three times as expensive, and you can buy yourself a one-way ticket to the US and live in low-priced luxury. Or you could get a 30 euro flight to Marrakech and live out your days in the even lower-priced luxury of Morocco. Heck, there are no subways here, but £3.50 would get you a taxi ride anywhere you wanted within any metropolitan area, and enough left over for lunch once you get there.
'b) MacOS doesn't have "windows-style "uninstall" functionality" because uninstalling is trivial.'
I agree with this for the most part, but I have wished that there were a way to uninstall applications more completely on my Macs. For example, applications that install things in the/Library/ApplicationSupport folder, or ones that install fonts, or this amazingly annoying HP printer software that re-adds its icon to my Dock every time I reboot. Most of the stuff that isn't contained in the application bundle doesn't take up much space (e.g. plist files) and doesn't hurt to leave lying around, but it would be nice to be able to wipe some things out a bit more systematically (no pun intended).
For things like this, I like to think of John Rawls's basic argument for how governments should make decisions. He argues that from behind the 'veil of ignorance', where one cannot know who one would be in a given society, one would make the best decisions for society as a whole. So if, for example, you don't know whether or not you'll be born blind, you'll make a reasonable decision about making things handicapped-accessible, as opposed to if you know that you either will or won't be blind. In this case, if one could reasonably argue that people behind the veil of ignorance would want free wi-fi, then it would be a good idea. So even if some people won't use it, it could be very useful in extending access to people who wouldn't otherwise have it, or it might be useful enough for all those residents who want to use their laptops on the beach (perhaps this is 80% of the population) and would not significantly impact the others in a negative way.
In addition, I think the benefits discussed in Damek's comment are significant here: if there are community benefits, as opposed to individual benefits, this is a good reason for the government to get involved.
For a great card game that is both friendly to new players and scales in complexity and craziness as you get more involved, try a game called Killer Bunnies. It has various elements of randomness that ensure that the final outcome of the game is based partially on chance, the most obvious of these being the final determination of the winner, which is based on a randomly ordered deck. However, it is no Sorry! or something in which the game is entirely based on the roll of the die. Also, it has increasingly interesting and complicated elements the more expansion decks you purchase (non-collectible, unlike Magic or something like that), and frankly each of those that we have added seems to have improved the game.
I have no idea how this game has managed to survive to produce something like 7 expansion decks, as it seems like no stores carry it, but it is a game that I have enjoyed playing both with avid game players and with those who are generally not interested in games. It's not a game I want to play every day, after having played it frequently over the past few years, but it continues to be interesting, fun, and I imagine that if you play a lot of computer/console games it might be a refreshing occasional break from that.
Super Monkey Ball is awesome. I vote for Super Monkey Ball 2, myself, because as another person mentioned it has better multiplayer options. Monkey baseball is always a hit with large groups (taking turns hitting/pitching), and a few of the other games. The single-player mode is fun with one or two people.
Does this mean that Google also pays Apple for searches made from Safari, Opera for searches from that browser, etc? It would make sense, I would think, as TFA mentions treats this as similar to other 'partner' programs Google has, but I never knew that to be the case. Do you think they would pay a browser's producer if Google is not the default search engine, but an option, and the user selects that option?
That is a terrible way to test toxicity of anything. That's like saying, "Go sniff some lead paint in an old, asbestos-filled building, then come back. Still there? OK, you're safe." As was argued elsewhere in this thread, the risk of various forms of mercury, asbestos, etc. may be overblown, but the oh-so-scientific method of assuming that anything that doesn't kill you immediately is safe is just dumb. The risks stated were brain damage and cancer; neither of these is likely to be something that would have dramatic consequences immediately.
Moreover, even if the effects were immediate, they wouldn't necessarily be a foregone conclusion. If there was a 1% chance that something would kill you immediately, would it be a good idea to try it out and then assume it to be perfectly safe when you and ten of your buddies on Slashdot survived?
Finally, even if something killed you immediately *and* had a very high chance of doing so (say 50%), how many dead people read Slashdot? Asking a bunch of obviously living people if they have ever done something with even a very high probability of death is necessarily only going to yield positive responses.
I trust the poster who works with fluorescent lights and has taken measurements of the risks of exposure to broken lights of various sizes, and who knows the difference between different kinds of mercury (post 14235364), but not the guy who'll recommend anything that hasn't killed him yet.
Will that be a huge setback to the project, or will they just be able to check a box and recompile, as Steve Jobs suggested in his keynote? I guess it's probably the former, since they're probably not using XCode. Alas. I'd check the Wiki to see, but it's/.ed.
Or you could pay the salaries of 5 or 10 times as many police officers. Or you could invest in the impoverished communities that produce the conditions that create the thugs that Batman beats up.
While becoming Batman doesn't seem like the best option, I'm not sure yours is that much better, unless you want the person control over the thugs in case you want to turn to evil or just beat up some fellow rich guy who crossed you.
As much as I'd like to claim, as an Apple user, that this something about how widespread or well made or whatever Apple products are, the fact is that it's just rate of popularity growth (or whatever those business phrases mean), not any measure of quality.
I agree that Blackberry shouldn't be so high if the measurement were of what is really productivity-boosting, well engineered, or anything like that. The only people I know who've had Blackberries complain bitterly about them. But the fact is that they're growing in popularity... so maybe in 5 years me saying Blackberries aren't helpful will be like people who argue now that e-mail is just a waste of time.
Most people wouldn't actually like a 'simple' tax system if they saw one.
Making lots of medical payments you currently get to deduct? Sorry.
Putting yourself through an expensive school (or paying for your kids)? Sorry.
In the middle class, as 95% of Americans think they are? Sorry, a flat tax and other 'simple' solutions tend to lower taxes on the wealthiest, meaning some of that burden gets shifted to you.
I'll take the time to fill out complicated forms or hire an accountant, thanks, if it means that when I or someone else has a serious expense that deserves to be exempted, like medical bills, it gets exempted rather than ignored.
Having a simple option like this one in a system that allows for complexity when necessary, however, seems like a great idea; those people who don't need to worry about lots of rare exceptions can get an easier tax experience.
Well, technically midnight on Dec. 2 until 4 am on Dec. 3 would be 28 hours. Plus, that's only most of the pictures. So if you figure the curve has long tails on both sides, and 'most' represents, say, 50%... he could have been viewing them pictures for 28 solid hours in the middle, and 15 or 20 years on either end...
Google Scholar certainly isn't a tool that any self-respecting scholar would use all or most of the time to find information. I certainly wouldn't encourage any research institution that can afford other services to forgo them in favor of Google Scholar... but I don't think Google Scholar would argue for that, either. When I've used Google Scholar, it's been because I needed to quickly find an article, usually one that I subsequently read through a link to a paid service which my university subscribed to. Since most of the articles require subscriptions, Google Scholar isn't much good by itself.
That said, why is this article being written? Why is it so incredibly one-sided? Other services are 'awesome' and "from Stanford University, the alma mater of many of the smartest Web developers whom you hear about every day," while Google isn't mentioned as also a product of former Stanford students? My guess is because the publishing company gets paid by the other services, and has in turn probably invested lots of resources in them. Google's getting access to information that Gale previously supplied to services like HighWire for a fee, and letting people access that information for free, in many cases.
Bottom line: the article's right, GS shouldn't be the only thing anyone uses. However, if it bought one of the companies that has marked everything up with tons of meta-data, I think we'd see something much better than the current pay services.
Maybe you didn't read the previous article. It clearly argues that Apple will benefit from allowing piracy now, with the development version, and then locking down the OS with later versions. In other words, when they release their own hardware, which is what this article discusses.
Tell me you didn't read either article, but felt qualified to snipe. You did write a post referring to both, FortKnox...
Just because a post refers to another Slashdot article, and criticizes an editor, doesn't mean it's insightful.
Just force them to play really slow, and then have all those celebrities playing poker on TV act as faces for the bots. The programs would get to be associated with famous faces, and the famous faces would get to actually be good at poker.
I don't see any reason why this need be the case. If you're worried about old files, you could add a component to the folder query that excludes files older than a certain date. Or you could make a label like 'archive' and then tag old files with that; have folders exclude items with that tag. You'd still get 'archived' files showing up in Spotlight searches, unless you exclude them each time, but you would in any search utility.
As for changing labels, I haven't used Tiger yet, but there's no reason why it couldn't be easy to universally change all files tagged with one label to having another instead.
If the name were unmemorable, how would you find it in a folder system? What's that you say? By putting it within something that you can remember? Why not do the same here? Make a regular folder that contains your hard-to-remember smart folders. Or, I don't know how this works, but presumably you could make a smart folder to contain other smart folders -- for example, in the above 'archive' example, you could have multiple smart folders for archives for specific projects, and have a smart folder contain all such folders.
One handy feature about smart folders I've (automatically or intentionally) organized things in is it makes it easy to go back and figure out what I no longer need, and delete it, thus freeing up disk space and reducing clutter. Spotlight is perfect for AVOIDING clutter.
Greg
Maybe they should have talked to the NSA. Have you seen their security guides? I can't find it right now, but I remember reading one that involved removing all optical drives, blocking all access to other computers, having your computer hidden by Saddam Hussein's WMD team, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what the deal is with this story linking to 'Eurekalerts', but here's the link to the press release on MIT's news office's site:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/vascular-1217.html
Greg
The article in no way implies that only one machine was problematic. Machines at different locations (e.g. "African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale" and "Lemon City Library in Miami") and on different days exhibited problems.
Moreover, none of these calibration problems seem to have favored Republican candidates. Considering the small sample size, it's certainly possible that this is random, but I don't blame people for being suspicious.
So, "hardons" notwithstanding, there are definitely problems. Even if there is, indeed, no "right-wing conspiracy" involved, it's a serious issue that people are having so much trouble voting for the correct candidates. If these problems occur merely between steps during on-screen voting, imagine how many other problem must also be occurring at these and other locations between on-screen voting and actual vote tallying, especially when there is no voter-verified paper trail!
I'm a big fan of the Internets; like the President and most of you, I use the Google, shop online, etc. However, this certainly doesn't encourage me to support electronic voting.
I think the real solution to this mess is to nationalize the voting system. In the US every state and even every county has its own voting system, with different machines, voting dates, ballot fonts, software, etc. Either a large number of these areas need to voluntarily work together to get some large-scale, robust voting protocols (electronic or not), control of setting election protocols should be shifted to the national government, or the national government needs to step in and a) set some standards, and b) pony up some money to help finance the establishment of solid voting protocols that can be used nationwide.
Frankly, I think that this is a very positive way to use the idea of Google bombing. The whole point of PageRank is that people vote with their links and other expressions of interest in certain pages. So when people pull a prank like linking 'miserable failure' to Bush or Moore, this is just sort of silly and unimportant. But when people really want others to know about an article that exposes an important aspect of a political figure, and they all link to that article, that seems to be perfectly in line with the spirit of Google. What's wrong - that they all chose to use the same link text? That they decided to coordinate their efforts and focus public opinion on one particular article? How is that different from a campaign choosing specific words and talking points to drive home in stump speeches, press materials, etc.?
I think the fact that the person who started this went out of his way to focus on substantive articles from real newspapers does a lot to distance this from the sort of 'prank' it could have been. If this were all focused on a parody site, or they were doing something deceptive like linking "John Kyl" to the site of a child molester with the same or similar name, I think that would be irresponsible. But especially when the first few entries are still his senate biography, campaign site, and wikipedia entry, I don't see the problem with this.
Interestingly, since a few hours ago when I read the article in the Times and first Googled "Jon Kyl," the article in question has disappeared from the first couple pages. Is Google actually taking a hand here? It sure looks like something has happened.
I think the parent is correct in saying that Acid2 is about testing compliance with certain standards, regardless of whether they are related to correctly written code or handling code with errors in it. The GP is correct, however, in arguing that the poster doesn't know what the fsck (s)he's talking about. The Acid2 test is something that I wish all browsers passed, sure, but it is not some sort of W3C validator that determines whether or not your browser complies with each any every W3C standard or not. It tests "features [the W3C] consider[s] most important for the future of the web". So a browser could pass the Acid2 test and still fail at all sorts of other important things related to (X)HTML, CSS, etc.
Developing to standards isn't easy, sure, and it takes some effort to figure out the most accessible, standards-compliant way to do seemingly simple things like having a rollover menu or a multi-column layout, but it's not impossible, it is worth the time invested in that it does produce more understandable, semantic, accessible, forward-compatible code, as has been commented on elsewhere in the comments.
If you are doing your best to produce a semantic, accessible site, and run into a problem that after serious effort you can't seem to resolve in a standards-compliant way, so be it. Send an e-mail to some standards guru or whatever to ask for help, and then go ahead and put a couple invalid lines of code into your pages. If you figure out a standards-compliant alternative later, you can change it. But don't use this as an excuse for laziness or a lack of a real understanding for the reasons behind the movement for standards-compliant design. Sticking a "Valid XHTML 49.3" badge on your web site simply because it runs through the validator OK doesn't mean that you've done everything right, but don't think that the ignorance of some of those people indicates that the whole idea of web standards is flawed.
Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/
Validation not only is not the be-all-end-all, but it also shouldn't be. I say this as someone who strongly supports validating one's web sites. The reason I say this is because validators can only test so much, and so while they might be a useful starting point and/or test along the way, they cannot test everything. Even if something is technically valid, that does not mean that it accomplishes all of the goals of validation, such as being accessible regardless of the user's browser, disability, operating system, etc.
Check out Roger Johansson's series on evaluating web site accessibility for more on this.
Greg---
http://www.gregwestin.com/
You're complaining about 45 cents? A friend of mine was just in London and said that a subway ride there is £3.50 ($6.45 US), whereas in New York City it's $2, and in many other cities it is less (in Boston, which I've heard has the highest cost of living of any city in the United States, a ride is $1.25).
If you're lucky, airfare isn't also over three times as expensive, and you can buy yourself a one-way ticket to the US and live in low-priced luxury. Or you could get a 30 euro flight to Marrakech and live out your days in the even lower-priced luxury of Morocco. Heck, there are no subways here, but £3.50 would get you a taxi ride anywhere you wanted within any metropolitan area, and enough left over for lunch once you get there.
Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/
'b) MacOS doesn't have "windows-style "uninstall" functionality" because uninstalling is trivial.'
I agree with this for the most part, but I have wished that there were a way to uninstall applications more completely on my Macs. For example, applications that install things in the /Library/ApplicationSupport folder, or ones that install fonts, or this amazingly annoying HP printer software that re-adds its icon to my Dock every time I reboot. Most of the stuff that isn't contained in the application bundle doesn't take up much space (e.g. plist files) and doesn't hurt to leave lying around, but it would be nice to be able to wipe some things out a bit more systematically (no pun intended).
Greg---
http://www.gregwestin.com
For things like this, I like to think of John Rawls's basic argument for how governments should make decisions. He argues that from behind the 'veil of ignorance', where one cannot know who one would be in a given society, one would make the best decisions for society as a whole. So if, for example, you don't know whether or not you'll be born blind, you'll make a reasonable decision about making things handicapped-accessible, as opposed to if you know that you either will or won't be blind. In this case, if one could reasonably argue that people behind the veil of ignorance would want free wi-fi, then it would be a good idea. So even if some people won't use it, it could be very useful in extending access to people who wouldn't otherwise have it, or it might be useful enough for all those residents who want to use their laptops on the beach (perhaps this is 80% of the population) and would not significantly impact the others in a negative way.
In addition, I think the benefits discussed in Damek's comment are significant here: if there are community benefits, as opposed to individual benefits, this is a good reason for the government to get involved.
---Greg
http://www.gregwestin.com
For a great card game that is both friendly to new players and scales in complexity and craziness as you get more involved, try a game called Killer Bunnies. It has various elements of randomness that ensure that the final outcome of the game is based partially on chance, the most obvious of these being the final determination of the winner, which is based on a randomly ordered deck. However, it is no Sorry! or something in which the game is entirely based on the roll of the die. Also, it has increasingly interesting and complicated elements the more expansion decks you purchase (non-collectible, unlike Magic or something like that), and frankly each of those that we have added seems to have improved the game.
I have no idea how this game has managed to survive to produce something like 7 expansion decks, as it seems like no stores carry it, but it is a game that I have enjoyed playing both with avid game players and with those who are generally not interested in games. It's not a game I want to play every day, after having played it frequently over the past few years, but it continues to be interesting, fun, and I imagine that if you play a lot of computer/console games it might be a refreshing occasional break from that.
Greg
Super Monkey Ball is awesome. I vote for Super Monkey Ball 2, myself, because as another person mentioned it has better multiplayer options. Monkey baseball is always a hit with large groups (taking turns hitting/pitching), and a few of the other games. The single-player mode is fun with one or two people.
Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/
The article was 'unavailable' when I tried to access it directly, but the coralized link works:
f inanceArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-03- 15T174222Z_01_N15403811_RTRIDST_0_CONGRESS-FINANCI AL-GAMBLING.XML
http://today.reuters.com.nyud.net:8080/investing/
Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/
...is a proxy server set up in Nevada.
Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/
Does this mean that Google also pays Apple for searches made from Safari, Opera for searches from that browser, etc? It would make sense, I would think, as TFA mentions treats this as similar to other 'partner' programs Google has, but I never knew that to be the case. Do you think they would pay a browser's producer if Google is not the default search engine, but an option, and the user selects that option?
Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com
This warranted a score of (5, Interesting)???
That is a terrible way to test toxicity of anything. That's like saying, "Go sniff some lead paint in an old, asbestos-filled building, then come back. Still there? OK, you're safe." As was argued elsewhere in this thread, the risk of various forms of mercury, asbestos, etc. may be overblown, but the oh-so-scientific method of assuming that anything that doesn't kill you immediately is safe is just dumb. The risks stated were brain damage and cancer; neither of these is likely to be something that would have dramatic consequences immediately.
Moreover, even if the effects were immediate, they wouldn't necessarily be a foregone conclusion. If there was a 1% chance that something would kill you immediately, would it be a good idea to try it out and then assume it to be perfectly safe when you and ten of your buddies on Slashdot survived?
Finally, even if something killed you immediately *and* had a very high chance of doing so (say 50%), how many dead people read Slashdot? Asking a bunch of obviously living people if they have ever done something with even a very high probability of death is necessarily only going to yield positive responses.
I trust the poster who works with fluorescent lights and has taken measurements of the risks of exposure to broken lights of various sizes, and who knows the difference between different kinds of mercury (post 14235364), but not the guy who'll recommend anything that hasn't killed him yet.
Sheesh, indeed.
Greg
http://www.gregwestin.com
Will that be a huge setback to the project, or will they just be able to check a box and recompile, as Steve Jobs suggested in his keynote? I guess it's probably the former, since they're probably not using XCode. Alas. I'd check the Wiki to see, but it's /.ed.
Greg
Here's the Coralized link:
e x.php/NeoOffice/J_1.1_Announcement#Announcement_.5 Ben.5D
http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com.nyud.net:8090/ind
Though, frankly, there's not much there to read.
Greg
Or you could pay the salaries of 5 or 10 times as many police officers. Or you could invest in the impoverished communities that produce the conditions that create the thugs that Batman beats up.
While becoming Batman doesn't seem like the best option, I'm not sure yours is that much better, unless you want the person control over the thugs in case you want to turn to evil or just beat up some fellow rich guy who crossed you.
As much as I'd like to claim, as an Apple user, that this something about how widespread or well made or whatever Apple products are, the fact is that it's just rate of popularity growth (or whatever those business phrases mean), not any measure of quality.
I agree that Blackberry shouldn't be so high if the measurement were of what is really productivity-boosting, well engineered, or anything like that. The only people I know who've had Blackberries complain bitterly about them. But the fact is that they're growing in popularity... so maybe in 5 years me saying Blackberries aren't helpful will be like people who argue now that e-mail is just a waste of time.
Most people wouldn't actually like a 'simple' tax system if they saw one.
Making lots of medical payments you currently get to deduct?
Sorry.
Putting yourself through an expensive school (or paying for your kids)?
Sorry.
In the middle class, as 95% of Americans think they are?
Sorry, a flat tax and other 'simple' solutions tend to lower taxes on the wealthiest, meaning some of that burden gets shifted to you.
I'll take the time to fill out complicated forms or hire an accountant, thanks, if it means that when I or someone else has a serious expense that deserves to be exempted, like medical bills, it gets exempted rather than ignored.
Having a simple option like this one in a system that allows for complexity when necessary, however, seems like a great idea; those people who don't need to worry about lots of rare exceptions can get an easier tax experience.
Well, technically midnight on Dec. 2 until 4 am on Dec. 3 would be 28 hours. Plus, that's only most of the pictures. So if you figure the curve has long tails on both sides, and 'most' represents, say, 50%... he could have been viewing them pictures for 28 solid hours in the middle, and 15 or 20 years on either end...
Google Scholar certainly isn't a tool that any self-respecting scholar would use all or most of the time to find information. I certainly wouldn't encourage any research institution that can afford other services to forgo them in favor of Google Scholar... but I don't think Google Scholar would argue for that, either. When I've used Google Scholar, it's been because I needed to quickly find an article, usually one that I subsequently read through a link to a paid service which my university subscribed to. Since most of the articles require subscriptions, Google Scholar isn't much good by itself.
That said, why is this article being written? Why is it so incredibly one-sided? Other services are 'awesome' and "from Stanford University, the alma mater of many of the smartest Web developers whom you hear about every day," while Google isn't mentioned as also a product of former Stanford students? My guess is because the publishing company gets paid by the other services, and has in turn probably invested lots of resources in them. Google's getting access to information that Gale previously supplied to services like HighWire for a fee, and letting people access that information for free, in many cases.
Bottom line: the article's right, GS shouldn't be the only thing anyone uses. However, if it bought one of the companies that has marked everything up with tons of meta-data, I think we'd see something much better than the current pay services.
Maybe you didn't read the previous article. It clearly argues that Apple will benefit from allowing piracy now, with the development version, and then locking down the OS with later versions. In other words, when they release their own hardware, which is what this article discusses.
Tell me you didn't read either article, but felt qualified to snipe. You did write a post referring to both, FortKnox...
Just because a post refers to another Slashdot article, and criticizes an editor, doesn't mean it's insightful.
Just force them to play really slow, and then have all those celebrities playing poker on TV act as faces for the bots. The programs would get to be associated with famous faces, and the famous faces would get to actually be good at poker.
I don't see any reason why this need be the case. If you're worried about old files, you could add a component to the folder query that excludes files older than a certain date. Or you could make a label like 'archive' and then tag old files with that; have folders exclude items with that tag. You'd still get 'archived' files showing up in Spotlight searches, unless you exclude them each time, but you would in any search utility. As for changing labels, I haven't used Tiger yet, but there's no reason why it couldn't be easy to universally change all files tagged with one label to having another instead. If the name were unmemorable, how would you find it in a folder system? What's that you say? By putting it within something that you can remember? Why not do the same here? Make a regular folder that contains your hard-to-remember smart folders. Or, I don't know how this works, but presumably you could make a smart folder to contain other smart folders -- for example, in the above 'archive' example, you could have multiple smart folders for archives for specific projects, and have a smart folder contain all such folders. One handy feature about smart folders I've (automatically or intentionally) organized things in is it makes it easy to go back and figure out what I no longer need, and delete it, thus freeing up disk space and reducing clutter. Spotlight is perfect for AVOIDING clutter. Greg
Maybe they should have talked to the NSA. Have you seen their security guides? I can't find it right now, but I remember reading one that involved removing all optical drives, blocking all access to other computers, having your computer hidden by Saddam Hussein's WMD team, etc.