I'm with you. So far I've never had a job where I was asked to carry a smartphone as part of my job, and I'm glad for that (I wouldn't say no, but I wouldn't like the idea).
If I ever was asked to carry a smartphone attached to my corporate email, I'd at least think about using my own device so I don't have to carry two. I definitely don't want to do my personal business on the company-owned device, so I'd want my own, but depending on what degree I'd be able to keep my work and personal stuff separate on my personal phone, it might be a better option than two-fisting it. But if they were going to try to claim any access to my phone at all, the deal would instantly be off, and I'll dual-wield, thank you.
For Apple to abandon a supplier practically costs them nothing. There are a hundred more companies eager to step up to the plate and at worst Apple sees a temporary dimple in their supply.
For Google to take a stance that they know shuts out a massive demographic is a much more significant ethical stand.
The two are not even close in terms of sacrifice involved.
I don't see how you got marked insightful when you deserve either troll or flamebait.
"Yes, business is personal, especially these days." Right. Google was losing market share in China. I bet that if it wasn't, business wouldn't have gotten anywhere near being "personal".
Google is refusing to capitulate to a totalitarian government, and is therefore giving up market share to stand by its values. That sure sounds personal rather than a business decision to me.
And what's that special "experience" of a totalitarian regime a child can get from the moment he's born up to 6 years old? Please.
A jury's hands are not tied by the law. Though in the US it's not looked upon favorably, and many judges will declare a mistrial if they think the defense is attempting to encourage it out of the jury. They will also sometimes remove jurors whom they think will act on the right to nullification.
Sure, malware has to occupy memory. That doesn't mean it has to be its own memory. Buffer overflows are all about corrupting another application's memory space.
His basic argument is that if you want to scan RAM, the kernel can halt all processing except its RAM scanner, and have a go at the RAM safely. If it's particularly insidious malware, it'll try to hide itself in various ways, one of which would be to masquerade the portion of RAM it was using with something legitimate looking (maybe erase that portion of memory). But you know it did this because you can see that memory which was supposed to be free is no longer free. Except the hardware has no concept of free or occupied memory. It just has memory, and the OS keeps track of what's free and not. The OS - the same space where malware is running.
OR, the malware could simply not do this, then its behavior is no different from any legitimate program. So how do you detect it now? You still need definitions that say, "When running in memory, this virus looks like X," then look through memory for that pattern.
Besides, who's to say that the kernel space is guaranteed free of malware itself? Even if you would have successfully identified the threat in RAM, you have no guarantee that the malware hasn't corrupted the identification routine.
It's like someone came along and said, "Hey, you guys are looking for malware wrong. You have to look for it! And I mean really look for it!"
There's no such thing as semi ubiquitous, the term is an absolute. It's either ubiquitous or it's not. H.264 in the browser is not ubiquitous. ~15% of the market supports H.264 natively in the browser. That is not ubiquity. And as long as HTML5's success is pinned to this encumbered spec, Mozilla won't support it. So for as long as that continues to be true, or until Firefox's upward momentum switches direction for a few years, HTML5 is a solution exclusively for ideologists and not for pragmatists.
Because Firefox doesn't come with Flash support either
The point isn't the relative difficulty of installing one plugin vs another plugin. The point is the likelihood of one already being installed before a user comes to your site (or the willingness to interrupt what they're doing to go and get it). Besides, Flash is easier to install in Firefox than a video codec (at least so far). Click the button that says, "Click here to install the missing plugin," click through a EULA (decidedly the suckiest part of the experience), and you're done.
It *can* be done. It hasn't been done yet
Nor is the platform in a state that all of the major players are yet behind a single standard. If Mozilla changes their mind about H.264 (maybe if MPEG LA offers them a royalty free license), then it might succeed. But until that happens, you've got a cart with horses on either end pulling in different directions. Maybe it gets somewhere eventually, but it won't be quick. That's a terrible way to usurp an established presence.
Flash is good for two things: Games and embedded video
This is not the entire domain gap between Flash and HTML5. Just in the video frontier, HTML5 has not yet started to tackle streaming audio/video (dynamic bitrate, real time navigation / seeking, and so forth) - these are things which require a protocol with appropriate support (thus fall outside of HTML5's purview and start needing to involve updates to the HTTP standard which so far HTML5 has not yet even talked about). Nor has it tried to tackle 3D, video cameras, microphones, desktop sharing, or rich application support. Sure, HTML5 has some more advanced user controls, but they're nowhere near what Flex offers under the Flash umbrella. And where is the desktop runtime environment that Flash offers under the Air platform? Let's not forget language updates to JavaScript to support static typing, data binding, packages, real classes, or a host of other high order OOP design principles supported today in ActionScript, let alone the assurance that your layout and code executes exactly the same no matter what the user's desktop experience is like.
As I've said, HTML5 is moving in the right direction. But in the very first of Flash's many strengths (albeit arguably one of its biggest strengths) that HTML5 is trying to take on, the major players can't even agree on something silly like a choice of codec.
I might very well agree with you, but in that case, Flash is just as guilty as everyone else who supports H264.
Right, so what's the point? One encumbered ubiquitous, well supported spec with excellent development tools already on the market vs another encumbered spec without those things.
Even if you're using Firefox, there's no reason you couldn't have a h264 plugin.
Is there one? How many people have it? What good is a standard with gaps so large you can't even provide a single version of a function that runs on all platforms implementing the standard?
I feel you're hearing something I'm not trying to say. There's a lot of accolades being put up on HTML5 as though Flash is now irrelevant (Apple certainly would like you to think so - this way you still have to get your apps for iPhone and iPad through the App Store and they can take a cut). Maybe some day. But HTML5 has a long way to go. The most common center of the debate surrounds video, and HTML5 can't even provide a dependable codec. This is Fledgling with a capital F, and that's all I'm really trying to say.
There is no area where HTML5 beats Flash except in ideology, and even that margin is razor thin. Sure, moving core functions of the World Wide Web directly into the HTML spec is a great idea. But so are many of the things in CSS3 - that doesn't mean there's yet any value for it in the market yet.
If HTML5 wants to usurp Flash, it needs to resolve the problems of video codec, they need to start talking immediately about camera, microphone, and streaming support, and it needs to demand the same sort of language uniformity out of JavaScript which exists already in ActionScript, as well as to expand that language to natively support data binding, web services, and strong typing. At the rate HTML5 is going right now, it will be 5 years before it catches up to Flash from a feature perspective, and 5 more years after that before market penetration is sufficient that a company can safely throw their hat into that ring to the exclusion of Flash.
I'm not saying people should stay on Flash. I'm saying that the current environment is such that from a business perspective, the choices are either you produce just a Flash version, or you produce multiple versions with different codecs to hit as much of the market as possible, then still produce a Flash version to hit the rest of the market.
Like I said, HTML5 is the right direction. But it's immature, non-ubiquitous, inconsistent, and poorly supported. It's where technology should be going, but it sure as heck isn't there yet, and we've got years to go before it is.
I'm also speaking beyond just video (which seems to be the only significant discussion for many people RE HTML5-v-Flash), and also functionality Flash provides that HTML5 doesn't even have a draft for yet.
But speaking specifically to video:
H264 is getting to be pretty darned ubiquitous, close to how MP3 was for audio back in the heyday of Napster.
H.264 is a lot of places, sure. But as I pointed out, it's patent and licensing encumbered, and therefore certainly doesn't qualify as a panacea for all things video. Mozilla can't/won't support it under current circumstances, so that automatically disqualifies it for any ubiquity label in the browser market (and that's the conversation space where we're at).
H.624 is a great codec. It's what I use for my own video library - excellent quality, great performance, and small file sizes, what else could you ask for? But it's it's not free in either the speech or beer senses. Unless and until becomes so, or Ogg Theora sees adoption in Chrome and Safari, Flash is still the better choice for pragmatists - even though it uses H.264 under the hood, it also abstracts this and adopts the burden of market coverage itself rather than leaving it up to the developer.
In order for HTML5 to achieve ubiquity, it needs to provide a unified interface. Developers need to be able to write once and run anywhere like they can do with Flash today. HTML5 will not displace Flash as long as there are still codec wars going on (and sure, maybe you can say that the browser shouldn't care about codec and leave it up to the OS - but as long as that's the approach, HTML5 will never succeed). Today developers test their product on their Windows install of Flash running under IE 6. It works there, so it works everywhere. Test your HTML5 product on Firefox OS X. Then test it again on Chrome OS X, and again on Safari OS X. Now start testing under Windows, and again under Linux.
HTML5 won't win the war like this. It needs to displace a mature product, and it's still too immature. Like I said from the start: this is the right direction, but it's far from even being a contest worth having yet.
Your choices are still 1) create content once for a ubiquitous platform available absolutely everywhere except Apple embedded devices (where Apple chooses for you that you don't have access to it), or 2) create content multiple times in multiple formats, falling back on browser sniffing and other skulduggery, plus having to test on a variety of different platforms, then going ahead and creating the #1 version anyway since there are still people you can't reach without this no matter how hard you try.
HTML5 is the right direction. But it is a long, long way from mature. There isn't a single ubiquitous codec even when your users support the fledgling standard otherwise. Until then, Flash is still the right choice for all but technical purists, both for video, and for absolutely everything else Flash offers (including feature domain HTML5 doesn't cover even in draft).
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." I don't see an age limit in there. Do you?
Not to be snarky, but I didn't realize that the principal's action was an act of congress.
Don't get me wrong, I think the principal overstepped his bounds because he couldn't keep his emotions in check, it's just that I'm having a hard time relating this to a constitutional issue of some sort.
No. I would tell Steve Jobs not to dictate technology by banning its use. If HTML5 is better, the market will migrate toward it on its own. Don't be fooled: Apple is trying to maintain app store lock-in, and insulting us by trying to claim this is a technological stance. It's pure greed, not technological purity.
If HTML5 can do everything Flash can do (it can do a lot, but not everything), then all the complaints people have about Flash will simply shift on over to HTML5. Whatever abuses of Flash exist, those abuses will still exist in a new form. You will still be invited to punch the monkey, only now you won't be able to use software like FlashBlock to avoid it.
Somehow people assume that abuses of technology are a problem with the technology itself. As though there's something wrong with the Internet because it can be used to transfer kiddy porn, or there's something wrong with baseball bats because they can be used to beat someone up. Abuses will exist no matter what the technology is.
I disagree. I think it makes perfect sense to have single-finger uses be an interaction while multi-finger uses are manipulation.
Two fingers to scroll, one finger to perform the same functions a mouse cursor does (including hover, click, drag, etc).
Giving something like scroll which doesn't require positional precision the most precise input available (single finger) is foolish, and that is the problem here: the device's inability to provide hover states because the most intuitive input for that has already been given away.
I do not think it is an advancement that we have fewer total possible interactions with how current touch screen interfaces work. That's a regression, and worse yet, it doesn't have to be.
Because the security software was not a secret. Parents and students were told of its existence, they just weren't required to sign an acknowledgement of it.
It wasn't a secret that there was security software on the laptops. Parents and students knew about it, they just weren't required to sign an acknowledgement.
The student got in trouble for something, and he decided the best defense was a good offense, "Well, you shouldn't even have known about that," when in fact until it goes to trial and the remote activation logs are examined, we as the public have no way of verifying the veracity of the student's claim.
No, the media reports that the plaintiff contradicts it. It's right there in the title of the article you linked: "Student says official mistook candy for drugs on webcam pic"
It wasn't undisclosed. They just didn't make parents sign a paper acknowledging it.
If the student took the picture an emailed it to his friends we would not have this case. The administration would say "we received this information from an email from another student/teacher/parent." The case would simply not be there because the administration could easily defend itself.
If it was sent to another student, and that student sent it to the administrators, then the district may not be able to disclose where it got it outside of the court room - the district has an obligation to protect the privacy of other parties which may have been involved.
All I'm saying is, it's too early to draw judgment, all we have is a fairly generic statement from the district, plus a lot of unsubstantiated claims from the plaintiff.
The district's claim that it "has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever" doesn't square with the allegations which set off this whole storm.
You're right. It's he-said, she-said. But since the school district does have controls in place to protect against abuses (only two people have access to the function, and this access is logged), and because I'd be very, very surprised if the district was foolish enough to act in the way that the suit alleges, I'm siding firmly on the side of "someone needs to provide some proof before I condemn anyone" - something the sensationalist media seems to be trying very hard doesn't happen.
Now this may be what it was intended for, but it seems that someone didn't get the memo - or so the plaintiffs allege....why does the school say it won't start using the snooping feature again without "express written notification to all students and families"? I don't think it indicates anything at all that the district will more clearly communicate the existence and usage patterns of the software before they activate it again. The district has successfully used the software to recover 18 of 42 lost laptops, so if anything it seems like they might need even stronger software than this (though this is still $18,000 worth of taxpayer money the software has saved). Parents and students were surprised to know of its existence, and the district feels in retrospect that whatever communication was made in this regard was insufficient. That sounds like a reasonable action to me.
I still find it far more plausible that the student took a photo himself and sent it to his buddies, than that one of two people with access to the system abused it, then exposed their abuse to a principal (who is not one of the two with access), who decided instead of doing something about the abuse, to then further abuse it themselves, and expose the abuse to the student and the student's parents. Sorry, one kid being kinda stupid is far more likely than two adults being very stupid.
You're right about the App store lock in, but it's not against the law to make profits.
You're right, but that doesn't mean I should thank them and ask for another =)
I've supported Apple in the past, but as their market penetration increases, their tactics become more and more anti-competitive. If they have a better technology platform they want to promote, they should do so on the merits of that technology rather than trying to simply shut out the alternative.
I have an iPhone 3G now, but my next phone will be Android based (it's my hardware, I'll decide what I run on it, thank you). This anti-competitive attitude of Apple's is way too unhealthy for the industry, and if they end up with a majority share, we'll fondly remember halcyon the days of Microsoft's less aggressive lock-in. I don't plan to buy an iPad, and I do plan to get a tablet PC.
So where's Java? This is still a financial stance, not a technological one. They know HTML5 ubiquity is still years away, and they plan to capitalize on that gap by denying owners access to features they want unless they have paid Apple for it first.
It all feels strongly of media sensationalism seeking a big payday for the plaintiffs, rather than an honest effort to correct something the plaintiffs legitimately believe to be wrong.
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I'm with you. So far I've never had a job where I was asked to carry a smartphone as part of my job, and I'm glad for that (I wouldn't say no, but I wouldn't like the idea).
If I ever was asked to carry a smartphone attached to my corporate email, I'd at least think about using my own device so I don't have to carry two. I definitely don't want to do my personal business on the company-owned device, so I'd want my own, but depending on what degree I'd be able to keep my work and personal stuff separate on my personal phone, it might be a better option than two-fisting it. But if they were going to try to claim any access to my phone at all, the deal would instantly be off, and I'll dual-wield, thank you.
For Apple to abandon a supplier practically costs them nothing. There are a hundred more companies eager to step up to the plate and at worst Apple sees a temporary dimple in their supply.
For Google to take a stance that they know shuts out a massive demographic is a much more significant ethical stand.
The two are not even close in terms of sacrifice involved.
I don't see how you got marked insightful when you deserve either troll or flamebait.
Google is refusing to capitulate to a totalitarian government, and is therefore giving up market share to stand by its values. That sure sounds personal rather than a business decision to me.
See here for a first-hand account of exactly how aware a 6 year old child is under a totalitarian regime.
Google is earning my respect in a big way with how they are dealing with China.
A jury's hands are not tied by the law. Though in the US it's not looked upon favorably, and many judges will declare a mistrial if they think the defense is attempting to encourage it out of the jury. They will also sometimes remove jurors whom they think will act on the right to nullification.
Sure, malware has to occupy memory. That doesn't mean it has to be its own memory. Buffer overflows are all about corrupting another application's memory space.
His basic argument is that if you want to scan RAM, the kernel can halt all processing except its RAM scanner, and have a go at the RAM safely. If it's particularly insidious malware, it'll try to hide itself in various ways, one of which would be to masquerade the portion of RAM it was using with something legitimate looking (maybe erase that portion of memory). But you know it did this because you can see that memory which was supposed to be free is no longer free. Except the hardware has no concept of free or occupied memory. It just has memory, and the OS keeps track of what's free and not. The OS - the same space where malware is running.
OR, the malware could simply not do this, then its behavior is no different from any legitimate program. So how do you detect it now? You still need definitions that say, "When running in memory, this virus looks like X," then look through memory for that pattern.
Besides, who's to say that the kernel space is guaranteed free of malware itself? Even if you would have successfully identified the threat in RAM, you have no guarantee that the malware hasn't corrupted the identification routine.
It's like someone came along and said, "Hey, you guys are looking for malware wrong. You have to look for it! And I mean really look for it!"
There's no such thing as semi ubiquitous, the term is an absolute. It's either ubiquitous or it's not. H.264 in the browser is not ubiquitous. ~15% of the market supports H.264 natively in the browser. That is not ubiquity. And as long as HTML5's success is pinned to this encumbered spec, Mozilla won't support it. So for as long as that continues to be true, or until Firefox's upward momentum switches direction for a few years, HTML5 is a solution exclusively for ideologists and not for pragmatists.
The point isn't the relative difficulty of installing one plugin vs another plugin. The point is the likelihood of one already being installed before a user comes to your site (or the willingness to interrupt what they're doing to go and get it). Besides, Flash is easier to install in Firefox than a video codec (at least so far). Click the button that says, "Click here to install the missing plugin," click through a EULA (decidedly the suckiest part of the experience), and you're done.
Nor is the platform in a state that all of the major players are yet behind a single standard. If Mozilla changes their mind about H.264 (maybe if MPEG LA offers them a royalty free license), then it might succeed. But until that happens, you've got a cart with horses on either end pulling in different directions. Maybe it gets somewhere eventually, but it won't be quick. That's a terrible way to usurp an established presence.
This is not the entire domain gap between Flash and HTML5. Just in the video frontier, HTML5 has not yet started to tackle streaming audio/video (dynamic bitrate, real time navigation / seeking, and so forth) - these are things which require a protocol with appropriate support (thus fall outside of HTML5's purview and start needing to involve updates to the HTTP standard which so far HTML5 has not yet even talked about). Nor has it tried to tackle 3D, video cameras, microphones, desktop sharing, or rich application support. Sure, HTML5 has some more advanced user controls, but they're nowhere near what Flex offers under the Flash umbrella. And where is the desktop runtime environment that Flash offers under the Air platform? Let's not forget language updates to JavaScript to support static typing, data binding, packages, real classes, or a host of other high order OOP design principles supported today in ActionScript, let alone the assurance that your layout and code executes exactly the same no matter what the user's desktop experience is like.
As I've said, HTML5 is moving in the right direction. But in the very first of Flash's many strengths (albeit arguably one of its biggest strengths) that HTML5 is trying to take on, the major players can't even agree on something silly like a choice of codec.
Also, forgive me for citing Wikipedia, but the H.264 implementation in open source products like VLC is of dubious legal status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing.
Right, so what's the point? One encumbered ubiquitous, well supported spec with excellent development tools already on the market vs another encumbered spec without those things.
Is there one? How many people have it? What good is a standard with gaps so large you can't even provide a single version of a function that runs on all platforms implementing the standard?
I feel you're hearing something I'm not trying to say. There's a lot of accolades being put up on HTML5 as though Flash is now irrelevant (Apple certainly would like you to think so - this way you still have to get your apps for iPhone and iPad through the App Store and they can take a cut). Maybe some day. But HTML5 has a long way to go. The most common center of the debate surrounds video, and HTML5 can't even provide a dependable codec. This is Fledgling with a capital F, and that's all I'm really trying to say.
There is no area where HTML5 beats Flash except in ideology, and even that margin is razor thin. Sure, moving core functions of the World Wide Web directly into the HTML spec is a great idea. But so are many of the things in CSS3 - that doesn't mean there's yet any value for it in the market yet.
If HTML5 wants to usurp Flash, it needs to resolve the problems of video codec, they need to start talking immediately about camera, microphone, and streaming support, and it needs to demand the same sort of language uniformity out of JavaScript which exists already in ActionScript, as well as to expand that language to natively support data binding, web services, and strong typing. At the rate HTML5 is going right now, it will be 5 years before it catches up to Flash from a feature perspective, and 5 more years after that before market penetration is sufficient that a company can safely throw their hat into that ring to the exclusion of Flash.
The Flash spec is already open: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/
I'm not saying people should stay on Flash. I'm saying that the current environment is such that from a business perspective, the choices are either you produce just a Flash version, or you produce multiple versions with different codecs to hit as much of the market as possible, then still produce a Flash version to hit the rest of the market.
Like I said, HTML5 is the right direction. But it's immature, non-ubiquitous, inconsistent, and poorly supported. It's where technology should be going, but it sure as heck isn't there yet, and we've got years to go before it is.
I'm also speaking beyond just video (which seems to be the only significant discussion for many people RE HTML5-v-Flash), and also functionality Flash provides that HTML5 doesn't even have a draft for yet.
But speaking specifically to video:
H.264 is a lot of places, sure. But as I pointed out, it's patent and licensing encumbered, and therefore certainly doesn't qualify as a panacea for all things video. Mozilla can't/won't support it under current circumstances, so that automatically disqualifies it for any ubiquity label in the browser market (and that's the conversation space where we're at).
H.624 is a great codec. It's what I use for my own video library - excellent quality, great performance, and small file sizes, what else could you ask for? But it's it's not free in either the speech or beer senses. Unless and until becomes so, or Ogg Theora sees adoption in Chrome and Safari, Flash is still the better choice for pragmatists - even though it uses H.264 under the hood, it also abstracts this and adopts the burden of market coverage itself rather than leaving it up to the developer.
In order for HTML5 to achieve ubiquity, it needs to provide a unified interface. Developers need to be able to write once and run anywhere like they can do with Flash today. HTML5 will not displace Flash as long as there are still codec wars going on (and sure, maybe you can say that the browser shouldn't care about codec and leave it up to the OS - but as long as that's the approach, HTML5 will never succeed). Today developers test their product on their Windows install of Flash running under IE 6. It works there, so it works everywhere. Test your HTML5 product on Firefox OS X. Then test it again on Chrome OS X, and again on Safari OS X. Now start testing under Windows, and again under Linux.
HTML5 won't win the war like this. It needs to displace a mature product, and it's still too immature. Like I said from the start: this is the right direction, but it's far from even being a contest worth having yet.
In the mean time, Mozilla has stated that they're unable to ship H.264 as part of Firefox. H.264 has patent and licensing issues associated with it.
Your choices are still 1) create content once for a ubiquitous platform available absolutely everywhere except Apple embedded devices (where Apple chooses for you that you don't have access to it), or 2) create content multiple times in multiple formats, falling back on browser sniffing and other skulduggery, plus having to test on a variety of different platforms, then going ahead and creating the #1 version anyway since there are still people you can't reach without this no matter how hard you try.
HTML5 is the right direction. But it is a long, long way from mature. There isn't a single ubiquitous codec even when your users support the fledgling standard otherwise. Until then, Flash is still the right choice for all but technical purists, both for video, and for absolutely everything else Flash offers (including feature domain HTML5 doesn't cover even in draft).
Not to be snarky, but I didn't realize that the principal's action was an act of congress.
Don't get me wrong, I think the principal overstepped his bounds because he couldn't keep his emotions in check, it's just that I'm having a hard time relating this to a constitutional issue of some sort.
No. I would tell Steve Jobs not to dictate technology by banning its use. If HTML5 is better, the market will migrate toward it on its own. Don't be fooled: Apple is trying to maintain app store lock-in, and insulting us by trying to claim this is a technological stance. It's pure greed, not technological purity.
If HTML5 can do everything Flash can do (it can do a lot, but not everything), then all the complaints people have about Flash will simply shift on over to HTML5. Whatever abuses of Flash exist, those abuses will still exist in a new form. You will still be invited to punch the monkey, only now you won't be able to use software like FlashBlock to avoid it.
Somehow people assume that abuses of technology are a problem with the technology itself. As though there's something wrong with the Internet because it can be used to transfer kiddy porn, or there's something wrong with baseball bats because they can be used to beat someone up. Abuses will exist no matter what the technology is.
I disagree. I think it makes perfect sense to have single-finger uses be an interaction while multi-finger uses are manipulation.
Two fingers to scroll, one finger to perform the same functions a mouse cursor does (including hover, click, drag, etc).
Giving something like scroll which doesn't require positional precision the most precise input available (single finger) is foolish, and that is the problem here: the device's inability to provide hover states because the most intuitive input for that has already been given away.
I read "no formal notice" yet "should have been clearly communicated" as the way I described it: it was clearly communicated, albeit not formally.
I do not think it is an advancement that we have fewer total possible interactions with how current touch screen interfaces work. That's a regression, and worse yet, it doesn't have to be.
Because the security software was not a secret. Parents and students were told of its existence, they just weren't required to sign an acknowledgement of it.
It wasn't a secret that there was security software on the laptops. Parents and students knew about it, they just weren't required to sign an acknowledgement.
The student got in trouble for something, and he decided the best defense was a good offense, "Well, you shouldn't even have known about that," when in fact until it goes to trial and the remote activation logs are examined, we as the public have no way of verifying the veracity of the student's claim.
I've never found track pads to be unintuitive or user unfriendly - any more so than my mouse is.
No, the media reports that the plaintiff contradicts it. It's right there in the title of the article you linked: "Student says official mistook candy for drugs on webcam pic"
It wasn't undisclosed. They just didn't make parents sign a paper acknowledging it.
If it was sent to another student, and that student sent it to the administrators, then the district may not be able to disclose where it got it outside of the court room - the district has an obligation to protect the privacy of other parties which may have been involved.
All I'm saying is, it's too early to draw judgment, all we have is a fairly generic statement from the district, plus a lot of unsubstantiated claims from the plaintiff.
Why does it not occur to you that perhaps the student took the photo and emailed it to their buddies?
You're right. It's he-said, she-said. But since the school district does have controls in place to protect against abuses (only two people have access to the function, and this access is logged), and because I'd be very, very surprised if the district was foolish enough to act in the way that the suit alleges, I'm siding firmly on the side of "someone needs to provide some proof before I condemn anyone" - something the sensationalist media seems to be trying very hard doesn't happen.
Now this may be what it was intended for, but it seems that someone didn't get the memo - or so the plaintiffs allege. ...why does the school say it won't start using the snooping feature again without "express written notification to all students and families"? I don't think it indicates anything at all that the district will more clearly communicate the existence and usage patterns of the software before they activate it again. The district has successfully used the software to recover 18 of 42 lost laptops, so if anything it seems like they might need even stronger software than this (though this is still $18,000 worth of taxpayer money the software has saved). Parents and students were surprised to know of its existence, and the district feels in retrospect that whatever communication was made in this regard was insufficient. That sounds like a reasonable action to me.
I still find it far more plausible that the student took a photo himself and sent it to his buddies, than that one of two people with access to the system abused it, then exposed their abuse to a principal (who is not one of the two with access), who decided instead of doing something about the abuse, to then further abuse it themselves, and expose the abuse to the student and the student's parents. Sorry, one kid being kinda stupid is far more likely than two adults being very stupid.
You're right, but that doesn't mean I should thank them and ask for another =)
I've supported Apple in the past, but as their market penetration increases, their tactics become more and more anti-competitive. If they have a better technology platform they want to promote, they should do so on the merits of that technology rather than trying to simply shut out the alternative.
I have an iPhone 3G now, but my next phone will be Android based (it's my hardware, I'll decide what I run on it, thank you). This anti-competitive attitude of Apple's is way too unhealthy for the industry, and if they end up with a majority share, we'll fondly remember halcyon the days of Microsoft's less aggressive lock-in. I don't plan to buy an iPad, and I do plan to get a tablet PC.
Do you know what OS JooJoo uses?
So where's Java? This is still a financial stance, not a technological one. They know HTML5 ubiquity is still years away, and they plan to capitalize on that gap by denying owners access to features they want unless they have paid Apple for it first.
It all feels strongly of media sensationalism seeking a big payday for the plaintiffs, rather than an honest effort to correct something the plaintiffs legitimately believe to be wrong.