Easier than that, they should be able to change their lineup through the digital box itself. That's how they can order pay-per-view movies right now, and that's what I meant by "programatically" beit through the digital box, automated phone interface or internet. It wouldn't surprise me if that's already in the works, competition between cable and satellite is quite hot here.
Fantastic! Sign me up. There are only 3 TV channels that I'd like to get and I'd prefer to pay $18 for those three instead of $50 for those 3 and 997 others that I would watch rarely.
This is like pre-paid cellphones. I pay 40 cents per minute for my pre-paid cellphone calls, but I rarely use my cellphone and I can pay as little as $11.50 a month for it (tax included). I'd rather pay that than be forced to pay a minimum of $35/month for tons of minutes I'll never use.
A la carte, pre-paid, it's not for everyone, but it's sweet for those who don't need more.
I don't see anything wrong with this. If there were no fees then people would be calling every month dropping one channel and subscribing to another. If enough people do it, it'll cost the company lots of money, in customer support time if nothing else.
BTW, the cable company here offers some of the digital cable channels a la carte. The trick is, being offered through the digital box, they can change your subscribed channel list remotely, no need to send someone over. I'm not sure if they charge a fee for changing the lineup. Now if they could set it up to change the lineup programatically, then they shouldn't charge more than to recoup the programming cost.
BTW*2, the cable company in another city offers a "vacation" service. You can call them and ask to discontinue your cable service for between 3-6 months while you go on vacation. The thing is, they don't even come and disconnect your service during that time, they just don't bill you. I suppose they figure they lose less money from the few abusers than they would by sending technicians to all the vacationers.
In case you're asking for real... When a company wants to use a new technology, they usually get existing employees to train and learn it. These are usually people who are known to be good learners, good workers or, ahem, have some other good attributes.
The question of previous experience is only raised when hiring for a specific position, and that's because the new hire is somewhat of an unknown quantity: you don't know how good they are at picking up new tech. You can also get hired through other channels (job fairs, etc) for no specific skills or positions, luck out and get assigned to learn the new tech as soon as you start.
All this to say, the "require someone with 10 years of experience" is just one way among many that companies use to find and place people in their projects.
This is being offered by Orbital Development, the same whackos who want to charge NASA parking and storage fees for the NEAR Shoemaker probe on Eros. It wouldn't surprise me if the seller's feedback score becomes negative in the not-so distant future.
Yes! And that's where internet can be useful. It's one thing to say "I trust this source but not that," but how can I be sure my trusted sources weren't duped themselves? That's where sites like Slashdot come in. When a "news" item is posted here, anybody can comment on it, and this gives me a chance to guage the truth behind the article not only based on my own opinion but based on the opinions and references made by hundreds of others.
That's where traditional news media is weaker, TV, radio and newspapers are one-way communications and aren't accompanied by others' feedback. So I can never be sure if I'm getting the whole story or even the right story.
Re:"Canada's national newspaper?"
on
Linux in Canada
·
· Score: 1
Oops, gotta stop posting drunk... Anyway, yeah people here seem to have a pathological hatred for Ottawa, and they think Ontarians hate them too, but it's not really the case. Weird world.
Re:"Canada's national newspaper?"
on
Linux in Canada
·
· Score: 1
Heheh, amen. I grew up in Ontario and live in Vancouver now and I totally agree with you. I have half a mind to start a campaign asking for the
Um, Orleans is a suburb of Ottawa for sure, but being the ideal spot to plan terrorism?! Give us a break.
1) The man was arrested for allegedly helping terrorists because of email messages, not because he was stockpiling WMD in his house. He could have sent the emails from Winnipeg or St Johns with the same effect.
2) He lived in Orleans because that's where his family lived. His family lived in Orleans because one can buy a nice house there for a relatively reasonable price, and still be within commuting distance to Ottawa where there is a lot of jobs (as well as lots of jobs in Orleans).
3) If you want to have easy access to Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and US, your best bet is to live in Kingston. Montreal is also a good bet because there is a good number of people with terrorist ties living there. As such, Orleans is not even close to be the ideal spot. heck Ottawa is in the middle of nowhere, it was chosen as the capital because it's on the border of Quebec.
Microsoft should most definitely NOT be responsible for keeping the JRE up-to-date. What happens when a new major release of Java comes out? Is Microsoft supposed to come out with a new version of their OS or their browser and force everybody to upgrade so they can have the new version of the JRE as well?
The JRE is NOT part of the OS nor is it part of the browser, and it must NOT be part of either. It's a separate plugin and a run-time environment. Now if you find that users are reluctant to download and install the latest version of the JRE, that is a problem with Sun and the JRE installation process. In order for Java to be useful for browsers it should be (a) easy to download and install and (b) popular enough that users will be compelled to keep it up-to-date. For whatever reason, (a) and (b) aren't working, but that's not MS's fault.
Agreed. This is all to say: The rules for owning and keeping a.mail domain will be more restrictive than those imposed by CAN-SPAM.
The summary is a bit misleading, it's missing one key term which I've added here in bold: "... companies that comply with the US CAN-SPAM act... would not necessarily be eligibile to register a.mail address." (or "automatically" I suppose).
Yes, you exemplify my point exactly. Too many people nowadays can only think of their own generation... They cannot think of a project that starts now and spans several generations. They say "doesn't" is present, and present in today. Some projects take decades to bring fruit, just like some trees take decades to grow.
As far as predicting the future. Again, you're perfectly right. We can't predict the future. We don't know for sure if 50 years from now we'll need manned space travel, genetic manipulation, oil, fresh air, trees. What we can do is hedge our bets, work on preserving and inventing things that require long-term attention. Because, if we wait until the time we need them, it'll be too late.
I think the summary missed on one thing: the article is about American manned spaceflight, and not worldwide. In that regards, the article is right, manned spaceflight doesn't fit within the current model of the American society. Right now, Americans are mostly concerned about stuff like money, terrorism, patriotism, lawsuits. In this environment, manned spaceflight becomes too costly and, other than patriotism, adds too little to the American value system.
But... manned spaceflight is a good thing, and perhaps even a necessity, when done by other societies with other value systems. China, Russia, Europe are better suited for this task because either the government has more unilateral control, or the society is more scientifically-minded.
IMHO, those who say humanity (not just Americans) doesn't need manned spaceflight are not looking far enough into the future. It will take generations to improve the art to a usable state (where it becomes a matter of routine). We may not need to travel into space regularly now, but we will need it within a century and we should start getting prepared for it.
A lot of people are saying "big deal, I don't use IE." Neither do I, nor do I use yahoo or hotmail for anything personal. But some of my friends only have a hotmail/yahoo account and use IE either because it's their only choice (at work), or they're too lazy to install, configure and learn to use a new browser.
Now the article says this security flaw allows "Content disclosure of any email in the mailbox." This means that if you have sent anything personal to any mailbox on yahoo or hotmail, this info might be vulnerable, even if you personally don't use IE. The recipient might use IE and get their inbox read by others.
Newspaper and magazine publishers start giving away these devices (locked and DRM'd) with pre-paid long-term subscriptions to their e-issues (just like cellphones). After a year or so, new versions come out and the technophile start selling their used devices for cheap. Us cheapskates buy the used models, hack into them and load them up with books downloaded from usenet.
The good thing about XML for SVG: most modern programs already have support for parsing, manipulating and writing XML (through DOM, etc). So when it comes time to add support for SVG, the authors don't need to implement support for yet another set of file syntax. All they need to do is implement a bridge between XML elements and the rendering routines they already have.
In short, political issues aside, XML should make adoption of SVG much more easier.
From Opera's press release and IBM's writeup, it looks like web pages have to be specially encoded with new X+V markups to enable this. My guess is that you have to tie each link to a specific voice command and an instructive icon (or soundbite) is displayed (played) with the link.
So more likely (and if the page is designed well), you'll see/hear stuff like "say 'specs'" to view the specs, say 'contacts' to view our contact information,..."
First, what a trollish summary... According to the article, Gates' CC was hacked because the alleged culprits broke into a database, not because they knew his mother's maiden name.
Anyway... if some non-governmental org asks you for your mother's maiden name, most likely they just want to use it as a password. So just do that: give them a made-up name (but something you'll remember later).
"This sort of thing simply exemplifies the sad state of science education in the general public."
Really?! Some guy decides to put forward some crazy theories, and a small fraction of the population believes him, and that's proof that science education is in a sad state? I beg to differ.
I mean, science education might be in a sad state (I assume you're talking about US), but these situations are not caused by that. No matter how good education is, there will always be a small group of crackpots who create and/or follow crazy cults. You can't blame bad education on that.
Now... there is a problem with the American media (or perhaps worldwide?) where they get into a feeding frenzy over a certain subject, milk it for all its worth to gain as much viewership as possible and make money, then drop it for the next subject-du-jour.
Mars is a great example, a heavily-marketed Mars movie comes out, or a probe is sent, and there are Mars news everywhere, for about a month, then it's on to the next war or political scandal...
First, the article is purely anecdotal, it does no controlled comparison between CLI and GUI users and has no business drawing conclusions of any kind. My opinion is mostly anecdotal too, but all the same: The big difference between CLI and GUI users is training.
CLI teachers are more careful with their instructions, and CLI users take more time to learn the guts of the interface and resort to using help because the interface is non-obvious. They know that they can't do much without a good understanding of the system and periodically getting help.
Conversely, GUI teachers and users put themselves in a false sense of security, "it's GUI, it's easy to use, so I don't need to take the time and learn/teach it properly, just click away." Many GUI teachers don't even refer to the help mechanisms, considering it an unnecessary tool, and their students never learn to use it (some even avoid it like the plague).
E.g., I've had many friends call me and have the following conversation [no paperclip jokes please]:
Friend: how do I do x? Me: I don't know, did you try help? Friend: bah, help never works! me: *sigh* click on help, now see that box there... type "x" in it and hit Enter. Friend: oook if you insist... oh! thanks!
A well done GUI is easier to learn and use than CLI, it's just that many people are never taught properly on how to use it. Of course, there are both GUI and CLI applications that are just badly implemented and hard-to-use.
(2) is totally wrong. You're basing your argument on the premise that you can totally trust the information on a single encyclopedia. Not a chance.
Encyclopedias can be wrong, incomplete and outdated, and they regularly are. After all they're written by a small number of researchers and get edited by even fewer people. There is absolutely no guarantee that any given information in a single encyclopedia is correct or exhaustive. To be sure, you must consult several sets of encyclopedia and many books and articles specializing on the subject, compare their contents and apply your own critical thinking before drawing any conclusions.
Research on the internet is exactly the same thing. A careful researcher will consult many websites large and small to determine what the real answer is. The internet is actually superior because (a) with a good search engine you locate the information more quickly and (b) you have access to information from individuals (through message boards and blogs), information that you would never find in print because the publishing cost is too prohibitive for individuals.
I haven't seen this mentioned here... This is what internet is really all about. It's not about major news sites displaying what they think people are interested in, or major retailers selling their usual wares, it's about individuals sharing their raw experiences and knowledge with everyone else in the world.
If someone pushes the button, then a period of time goes by, the light changes, and the walk sign illuminates. If nobody pushes the button, then eventually the light will change, but the don't walk sign stays lit. Evidently, you're jaywalking unless you push the button, even if the light changes to be in your favor!
I see this behavior quite often here in Canada, usually when crossing a wide major street in the direction of a secondary street. If the button is not pushed, the light stays green just long enough for 2-3 cars from the secondary road to cross. If the button is pushed, the light stays green much longer, allowing time for slow-moving pedestrians to cross as well.
Hmm... maybe we should be paranoid enough to never leave any sensitive data on the laptop itself... Put the encrypted data in a USB drive and take the drive with you whenever you're not using the laptop.
Slashdot Mirror
Easier than that, they should be able to change their lineup through the digital box itself. That's how they can order pay-per-view movies right now, and that's what I meant by "programatically" beit through the digital box, automated phone interface or internet. It wouldn't surprise me if that's already in the works, competition between cable and satellite is quite hot here.
"... Let me see...$6.00 a month per"
Fantastic! Sign me up. There are only 3 TV channels that I'd like to get and I'd prefer to pay $18 for those three instead of $50 for those 3 and 997 others that I would watch rarely.
This is like pre-paid cellphones. I pay 40 cents per minute for my pre-paid cellphone calls, but I rarely use my cellphone and I can pay as little as $11.50 a month for it (tax included). I'd rather pay that than be forced to pay a minimum of $35/month for tons of minutes I'll never use.
A la carte, pre-paid, it's not for everyone, but it's sweet for those who don't need more.
I don't see anything wrong with this. If there were no fees then people would be calling every month dropping one channel and subscribing to another. If enough people do it, it'll cost the company lots of money, in customer support time if nothing else.
BTW, the cable company here offers some of the digital cable channels a la carte. The trick is, being offered through the digital box, they can change your subscribed channel list remotely, no need to send someone over. I'm not sure if they charge a fee for changing the lineup. Now if they could set it up to change the lineup programatically, then they shouldn't charge more than to recoup the programming cost.
BTW*2, the cable company in another city offers a "vacation" service. You can call them and ask to discontinue your cable service for between 3-6 months while you go on vacation. The thing is, they don't even come and disconnect your service during that time, they just don't bill you. I suppose they figure they lose less money from the few abusers than they would by sending technicians to all the vacationers.
In case you're asking for real... When a company wants to use a new technology, they usually get existing employees to train and learn it. These are usually people who are known to be good learners, good workers or, ahem, have some other good attributes.
The question of previous experience is only raised when hiring for a specific position, and that's because the new hire is somewhat of an unknown quantity: you don't know how good they are at picking up new tech. You can also get hired through other channels (job fairs, etc) for no specific skills or positions, luck out and get assigned to learn the new tech as soon as you start.
All this to say, the "require someone with 10 years of experience" is just one way among many that companies use to find and place people in their projects.
This is being offered by Orbital Development, the same whackos who want to charge NASA parking and storage fees for the NEAR Shoemaker probe on Eros. It wouldn't surprise me if the seller's feedback score becomes negative in the not-so distant future.
What news needs is peer review and feedback.
Yes! And that's where internet can be useful. It's one thing to say "I trust this source but not that," but how can I be sure my trusted sources weren't duped themselves? That's where sites like Slashdot come in. When a "news" item is posted here, anybody can comment on it, and this gives me a chance to guage the truth behind the article not only based on my own opinion but based on the opinions and references made by hundreds of others.
That's where traditional news media is weaker, TV, radio and newspapers are one-way communications and aren't accompanied by others' feedback. So I can never be sure if I'm getting the whole story or even the right story.
Oops, gotta stop posting drunk... Anyway, yeah people here seem to have a pathological hatred for Ottawa, and they think Ontarians hate them too, but it's not really the case. Weird world.
Heheh, amen. I grew up in Ontario and live in Vancouver now and I totally agree with you. I have half a mind to start a campaign asking for the
Um, Orleans is a suburb of Ottawa for sure, but being the ideal spot to plan terrorism?! Give us a break.
1) The man was arrested for allegedly helping terrorists because of email messages, not because he was stockpiling WMD in his house. He could have sent the emails from Winnipeg or St Johns with the same effect.
2) He lived in Orleans because that's where his family lived. His family lived in Orleans because one can buy a nice house there for a relatively reasonable price, and still be within commuting distance to Ottawa where there is a lot of jobs (as well as lots of jobs in Orleans).
3) If you want to have easy access to Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and US, your best bet is to live in Kingston. Montreal is also a good bet because there is a good number of people with terrorist ties living there. As such, Orleans is not even close to be the ideal spot. heck Ottawa is in the middle of nowhere, it was chosen as the capital because it's on the border of Quebec.
Microsoft should most definitely NOT be responsible for keeping the JRE up-to-date. What happens when a new major release of Java comes out? Is Microsoft supposed to come out with a new version of their OS or their browser and force everybody to upgrade so they can have the new version of the JRE as well?
The JRE is NOT part of the OS nor is it part of the browser, and it must NOT be part of either. It's a separate plugin and a run-time environment. Now if you find that users are reluctant to download and install the latest version of the JRE, that is a problem with Sun and the JRE installation process. In order for Java to be useful for browsers it should be (a) easy to download and install and (b) popular enough that users will be compelled to keep it up-to-date. For whatever reason, (a) and (b) aren't working, but that's not MS's fault.
Agreed. This is all to say: The rules for owning and keeping a .mail domain will be more restrictive than those imposed by CAN-SPAM.
... would not necessarily be eligibile to register a .mail address." (or "automatically" I suppose).
The summary is a bit misleading, it's missing one key term which I've added here in bold: "... companies that comply with the US CAN-SPAM act
Yes, you exemplify my point exactly. Too many people nowadays can only think of their own generation... They cannot think of a project that starts now and spans several generations. They say "doesn't" is present, and present in today. Some projects take decades to bring fruit, just like some trees take decades to grow.
As far as predicting the future. Again, you're perfectly right. We can't predict the future. We don't know for sure if 50 years from now we'll need manned space travel, genetic manipulation, oil, fresh air, trees. What we can do is hedge our bets, work on preserving and inventing things that require long-term attention. Because, if we wait until the time we need them, it'll be too late.
I think the summary missed on one thing: the article is about American manned spaceflight, and not worldwide. In that regards, the article is right, manned spaceflight doesn't fit within the current model of the American society. Right now, Americans are mostly concerned about stuff like money, terrorism, patriotism, lawsuits. In this environment, manned spaceflight becomes too costly and, other than patriotism, adds too little to the American value system.
But... manned spaceflight is a good thing, and perhaps even a necessity, when done by other societies with other value systems. China, Russia, Europe are better suited for this task because either the government has more unilateral control, or the society is more scientifically-minded.
IMHO, those who say humanity (not just Americans) doesn't need manned spaceflight are not looking far enough into the future. It will take generations to improve the art to a usable state (where it becomes a matter of routine). We may not need to travel into space regularly now, but we will need it within a century and we should start getting prepared for it.
A lot of people are saying "big deal, I don't use IE." Neither do I, nor do I use yahoo or hotmail for anything personal. But some of my friends only have a hotmail/yahoo account and use IE either because it's their only choice (at work), or they're too lazy to install, configure and learn to use a new browser.
Now the article says this security flaw allows "Content disclosure of any email in the mailbox." This means that if you have sent anything personal to any mailbox on yahoo or hotmail, this info might be vulnerable, even if you personally don't use IE. The recipient might use IE and get their inbox read by others.
Newspaper and magazine publishers start giving away these devices (locked and DRM'd) with pre-paid long-term subscriptions to their e-issues (just like cellphones). After a year or so, new versions come out and the technophile start selling their used devices for cheap. Us cheapskates buy the used models, hack into them and load them up with books downloaded from usenet.
The good thing about XML for SVG: most modern programs already have support for parsing, manipulating and writing XML (through DOM, etc). So when it comes time to add support for SVG, the authors don't need to implement support for yet another set of file syntax. All they need to do is implement a bridge between XML elements and the rendering routines they already have.
In short, political issues aside, XML should make adoption of SVG much more easier.
From Opera's press release and IBM's writeup, it looks like web pages have to be specially encoded with new X+V markups to enable this. My guess is that you have to tie each link to a specific voice command and an instructive icon (or soundbite) is displayed (played) with the link.
..."
So more likely (and if the page is designed well), you'll see/hear stuff like "say 'specs'" to view the specs, say 'contacts' to view our contact information,
Heheh yeah, I realized it after I posted the comment, consider me whooshed and idiotized. :bows deeply:
First, what a trollish summary... According to the article, Gates' CC was hacked because the alleged culprits broke into a database, not because they knew his mother's maiden name.
Anyway... if some non-governmental org asks you for your mother's maiden name, most likely they just want to use it as a password. So just do that: give them a made-up name (but something you'll remember later).
"This sort of thing simply exemplifies the sad state of science education in the general public."
Really?! Some guy decides to put forward some crazy theories, and a small fraction of the population believes him, and that's proof that science education is in a sad state? I beg to differ.
I mean, science education might be in a sad state (I assume you're talking about US), but these situations are not caused by that. No matter how good education is, there will always be a small group of crackpots who create and/or follow crazy cults. You can't blame bad education on that.
Now... there is a problem with the American media (or perhaps worldwide?) where they get into a feeding frenzy over a certain subject, milk it for all its worth to gain as much viewership as possible and make money, then drop it for the next subject-du-jour.
Mars is a great example, a heavily-marketed Mars movie comes out, or a probe is sent, and there are Mars news everywhere, for about a month, then it's on to the next war or political scandal...
That's all this is, yet another media frenzy.
First, the article is purely anecdotal, it does no controlled comparison between CLI and GUI users and has no business drawing conclusions of any kind. My opinion is mostly anecdotal too, but all the same: The big difference between CLI and GUI users is training.
CLI teachers are more careful with their instructions, and CLI users take more time to learn the guts of the interface and resort to using help because the interface is non-obvious. They know that they can't do much without a good understanding of the system and periodically getting help.
Conversely, GUI teachers and users put themselves in a false sense of security, "it's GUI, it's easy to use, so I don't need to take the time and learn/teach it properly, just click away." Many GUI teachers don't even refer to the help mechanisms, considering it an unnecessary tool, and their students never learn to use it (some even avoid it like the plague).
E.g., I've had many friends call me and have the following conversation [no paperclip jokes please]:
Friend: how do I do x?
Me: I don't know, did you try help?
Friend: bah, help never works!
me: *sigh* click on help, now see that box there... type "x" in it and hit Enter.
Friend: oook if you insist... oh! thanks!
A well done GUI is easier to learn and use than CLI, it's just that many people are never taught properly on how to use it. Of course, there are both GUI and CLI applications that are just badly implemented and hard-to-use.
(2) is totally wrong. You're basing your argument on the premise that you can totally trust the information on a single encyclopedia. Not a chance.
Encyclopedias can be wrong, incomplete and outdated, and they regularly are. After all they're written by a small number of researchers and get edited by even fewer people. There is absolutely no guarantee that any given information in a single encyclopedia is correct or exhaustive. To be sure, you must consult several sets of encyclopedia and many books and articles specializing on the subject, compare their contents and apply your own critical thinking before drawing any conclusions.
Research on the internet is exactly the same thing. A careful researcher will consult many websites large and small to determine what the real answer is. The internet is actually superior because (a) with a good search engine you locate the information more quickly and (b) you have access to information from individuals (through message boards and blogs), information that you would never find in print because the publishing cost is too prohibitive for individuals.
I haven't seen this mentioned here... This is what internet is really all about. It's not about major news sites displaying what they think people are interested in, or major retailers selling their usual wares, it's about individuals sharing their raw experiences and knowledge with everyone else in the world.
If someone pushes the button, then a period of time goes by, the light changes, and the walk sign illuminates. If nobody pushes the button, then eventually the light will change, but the don't walk sign stays lit. Evidently, you're jaywalking unless you push the button, even if the light changes to be in your favor!
I see this behavior quite often here in Canada, usually when crossing a wide major street in the direction of a secondary street. If the button is not pushed, the light stays green just long enough for 2-3 cars from the secondary road to cross. If the button is pushed, the light stays green much longer, allowing time for slow-moving pedestrians to cross as well.
Hmm... maybe we should be paranoid enough to never leave any sensitive data on the laptop itself... Put the encrypted data in a USB drive and take the drive with you whenever you're not using the laptop.