To use the literal case of "snake oil"--
There is nothing illegal about selling snake oil, in and of itself (unless it were to be a dangerous product.)
The legal issue is that a snake oil salesman implies that it "performs" some feat (implied warranty for a particular purpose). If the snake oil salesman truly believes that it works, but it can be proven that it does not, he has misrepresented the product. If the snake oil salesman knows it doesn't work, and claims that it does, then he is committing fraud.
If a person choose to use this product and did not gain the advertised result, then most people would at least agree they are entitled to a refund or, maybe even damages that resulted due to use.
In the case of Mr. Trudeau, it is alleged that his claims are false. Because customers are buying his book "for the purpose of implementing his 'treatments'" the book carries an implied warranty that the content of the text is fit for a particular purpose. If you bought the plans to assemble a boom-box from parts at Radio Shack, and were told that the plans worked, and you followed them properly and it did not produce a boom-box, you could claim that the product did not meet its implied warranty duties.
If customers were buying his book for entertainment, not any particular purpose, all the book would need to have is "words" in some narrative format.
If he said "I am selling an international anthology of alternative medical practices for historical, literary, or critical purposes" [and it's not my fault if you try them, and should they work, good for you] or "I am selling an international anthology of medical research that is the sole opinion of the individual authors" then it would be a different case.
However, someone would have to first make a successful claim that the treatment does not work, or that harm was done by not using an alternative treatment, or harm was directly done by the product (which addresses another issue of strict liability.) In this case, the government is making such a claim, right or wrong.
If he was not selling the book, but made it freely available, it would be a pure free-speech issue, which is a much more open to interpretation than fraud or misrepresentation in a transaction.
If you do choose FileNet, opt for the Unix/Oracle implementation. They offer the environment on Windows/MS-SQL but in the implementation I supported (inherited), it was very (I mean very) unstable and tended to crash at the slightest hiccup, and left a very poor impression. There was always a fear that a particular MS patch would kill it which was a security and stability issue that would (likely) be avoided on a mature UNIX platform running only the necessary services. (Disclaimer: Most of my work is in the Windows world).
They have a decent API, but it is slow (very slow) for mass imports. There are tools that access the undocumented (unsupported) libraries that are very fast, but run the issue of support. At the time I worked with it, the viewers were unsupported on Vista.
FileNet also has the issue of lack of community. If anything goes wrong, you're on the phone with IBM, which is not the style I like when it comes to managing a system. On the other systems I've supported, (LAMP servers, IIS, MSSQL, etc.) there is a lot of online vendor support, community and vibrant forums as a first step. With FN, I was able to come across one forum that was "OK" (filesite.org), and other than that it was a call to IBM or pouring though a stack of dead-tree training manuals.
Definitely consider the cost of on site-support and consulting from the vendor as a necessity.
This is not necessarily true. I've lived in 4 different US states in the past 6 years. Status updates for a period can be enough to keep that relationship going to the point that if I called them tomorrow it would not be a 2 hour conversation around catching up so much as "Hey, I have a 4 hour layover passing through Las Vegas on my way to Chicago next week, want to try to grab lunch?" or "Saw you were going to a convention in LA, I live about 90 minutes from there, think you'll have time to grab a beer?"
There are many friends who I simply do not have the time to keep up with because they are not good about using their e-mail or social media resources. I simply cannot coordinate calls when I am three time zones away and work two jobs the same way I can send you an e-mail or facebook message (effectively an e-mail) or comment on a post you made while my code is compiling.
Without these tools, I'd loose track of friends I have had and miss opportunities to enjoy their company, pursue business ventures, get information, or other things in meatspace.
Disclaimer: I am a community college instructor in California.
The difference is that community colleges already have the infrastructure to teach students who are below-college standard (e.g. have a high school diploma or GED but have serious deficiencies), tend to be more accessible, and are part of the larger K-14 state education system in the eyes of the state than the University system (K-16).
I've taught several students who take regular or remedial community college classes in lieu of normal or advanced high school classes simply to get college credit for the exact same knowledge they would get at high school. These students do this in order to cut costs of their general education curriculum or because their high schools are "gang infested hellholes" (to quote a student). They aren't taking community college classes in hopes of making into Harvard or Yale.
The problem with this system is that coordination has yet to provide a method where the student can meet 100% of their high school requirements at the community college level. I would propose granting a conditional diploma after passing the High School Exit Exam (which I passed in 8th grade) that would become legit after passing a General Ed curriculum (24 units) that can transfer to a state-school and take less than a year full time, or 2 full time academic years to earn an associates while their peers are still in high school.
If you are smart enough to pass the benchmark exam, and disciplined enough to meet the GE requirements at the CC, and don't care about the "high school experience" (or downright dread it), this is a perfect way to utilize the resources efficiently and help these students rather than have them take high school classes to turn around and take the exact same class in college 2 years later.
While an anecdote, at 2 places I have worked, there is a perception (I can't say if it is true or not) that older (particularly mainframe) programmers are unable or unwilling to transfer their skills to the client/server or web platforms, and that they are unwilling or unable to learn newer languages/design patterns.
Again, I can't say in a generalizable way if this is more-or-less "true" or not, but I think the perception is harmful to the older class of workers whose technology is being phased out in a lot of enterprises (and industry sectors.) For some programmers, there is also a tendency to "self-select" for specialization based on a particular tool chain or language preference. I know I could be a Java programmer, but I am so unfamiliar with the API that I'd be fairly ineffective until I got up to speed. I don't think many workplaces tend to frequently lower performance goals for this sort of learning curve making programmers avoid developing a broad skill set and focus narrowly. IT also tends to differentiate between web programmers, mainframe gurus, DBAs, server managers, etc. causing a further territoriality and specialization.
I would also argue that the rapid pace of obsolescence makes programmers particularly vulnerable to this perception (or reality). In industries where the skill set is more static, or there are minor incremental changes or a large number of legacy installations (such as in HVAC repair or general construction) there is less of a degree of specialization and rapid skill set changes.
Microsoft's strength and weakness has always been that it has allowed any Windows application to run on almost any Windows device with little modification (if any).
Windows CE was marketed as "lightweight Windows" but it did not run Windows applications, it ran poor replacements for Windows applications (Pocket Word, Pocket Excel) that were not good enough to replace their PC analogues, but because they were branded as such seemed far inferior. I think their issue was being "too" ahead of the curve, unable to provide a consumer product with the horsepower at a reasonable cost that didn't act like a really useless PC that ran none of their apps and had next to no storage versus a mildly more expensive laptop. (From someone who owned CE 2.1 and PocketPC devices). The devices failed to attract developers.
Tablets were expensive, and as the article suggested, were Windows PC with crappy bolt-on pen support that raised the price $1000. Microsoft also has to deal with lackluster hardware releases from vendors looking to maximize short-run profits over market dominance.
In every case you see Microsoft trying to make XBOX development like Windows development, Windows Mobile development like Windows development. Apple on the other hand seems content to have a mobile software ecosystem and a "computer" software ecosystem, even though the distinction is based on role/purpose and input method over any profound distinction.
In the end, the bar is different. Any Microsoft Tablet will get asked the question "Will it run Office (well)" where Apple is asked "Will it play music, movies and run Facebook." The customers are demanding new ways to use their PC from Microsoft, and the customers are asking apple for media devices.
The fundamental problem is that users want their computer to do things. They want responsive rich media web applications so conventional wisdom to turn off everything but HTML rendering causes their computer to not do stuff it used to be capable of.
The second problem is that in order for computers to do things, particularly in networked environments, is that processes could be working with trusted, semi-trusted or untrusted stuff (be-it content, code, whatever, it doesn't matter for the purpose used.) When security tools attempt to figure out what ought to be trusted or not trusted and gets it wrong, you either do something unsafe or you block the user from doing what they want to do (even if you or me would consider what they want to do as foolish or downright dangerous.) When users are expected to indicate what is trusted or not trusted they generally lack the insight to know what to pick, and vendors are at peril of designing annoying software that provides little true security if users always click "yes" causing the unsafe action to happen, or prevents their computer from working as expected, if they always click "no."
Sandboxing can be effective to limit access to other application's data, but can greatly limit interoperability and requires the developer make some decisions on behalf of the user, or makes the developer ask the user how isolated the process is from other resources in a way that is meaningful and they they can understand what the consequences in either case will be if they approve (ideally at setup).
I live near this facility (map/image) and it looks more like a gated-resort community than anything. I haven't seen any razor wire, but there are high fences and access is controlled through a gate, and there are cameras on the road and on the fence. For the interested, there is a wiki page that strikes me as being pretty accurate and NPOV.
All of the above... good catch, those would both be better choices in terms. Though I don't know to what degree Microsoft has documented what Win32 (or other) APIs are being utilized by the various methods in the framework in all cases.
Microsoft knows that mobile development is booming right now and their best chance to get into the market is on very accessible powerful development tools rather than the Windows OS which is quickly losing market share. If Microsoft can have mobile developers coding in.NET, having them be familiar with Windows development is trival (since the Framework obstruficates most of the OS API.)
If the Framework gets ported to non-MS platforms, having those developers develop on Visual Studio, on Windows, in Windows eco-systems is additional trivial.
I am absolutely certain that iPhone development is causing iPhone developers to learn and be comfortable with XCode on Mac machines while at the same time creating more skilled Objective-C coders that will be more proficent in writing normal OS X applications.
I am an adjunct instructor teaching Microsoft Excel classes at the community college and found that textbook PowerPoint files were absolutely horible. Aside from that, it does not lend itself to actual demonstration of the skill or for discussion. For hands on classes, there is definately something to be said for actual demonstration, not half-assed screen captures or videos that don't adapt to actual student questions.
In the end, for me, based on the quality and flexibility it just wasn't worth it, even though my lecture prep does take longer than just punting with the vendor's resources.
The only pro is that students could print them, but instead I offer them copies of my lecture notes which are my "digestion" of the text and the examples I'm going to be using in lecture which have a far more conversational tone and step-by-step walkthrough than bullet points and animations.
I don't know about Australia, but after the South Park movie, American cinemas (particularly the corp-owned multiplexes) started checking IDs for R-rated movies. Recently some retailers began following the ESRB ratings for games, but I have never seen a clerk at any store bat an eye over an R-rated (or Unrated) DVD sale to anyone regardless of age.
I always assumed it was just a "gentleman's agreement" to avoid regulation on the film/game industry, but that there was no legal mandate to follow the ratings recommendations. Does anyone know in the US if there is a legal requirement (anywhere?) and likewise in Australia are there restrictions on buying physical DVDs based on their ratings?
The difference is that Apple's website has a "magazine" format that is very easy to duplicate across teams and is conceptually easy to work with and has for a long time, an implicit asumption of uniformality cover-to-cover. Microsoft's webpage is more "web page" like, with less rigourous conceptual designs. Their pages are full dynamic elements, videos, etc... that complement the particular "brand" of software they are selling (notice the website themes within the office suite, the Windows consumer OS, and the Windows Server System and beyond to TechNet and MSDN). Uniformality for navigation's sake is an obvious after-the-fact bolt-on. That being said, MSDN is not conceptually bound to a printed-manual style making it far more usable than Apple's which very much presents like a print-manual converted to HTML.
I would be happy if someone would write something to filter the @ and # characters twitter users have some fascination with that have no relevance on non-twitter interfaces. While they are at it, may I go ahead and recommend something to filter, Mafia Wars and Farmville why they are at it. Facebook already has a pretty low signal-to-noise ratio thats only getting worse without people encrypting what little text is still there. That being said, it sounds very interesting as a practical use of crypto-in-plain-sight, and might raise awareness about cryptography and privacy.
The issue is that if they allow this application, they'll have a harder time justifying denying other applications using interpreted languages. That seems like a non-story to me. Everyone has known from the beginning that that was the case, and that the reason was that if they allowed it, there would be no way of controlling it.
However what I do think is interesting is that they'd allow any emulator at all. Particularly one whose games all depend upon an interpreted language. I'm primarily surprised because of the possibility that someone might be able to get unauthorized apps to run under it, not to mention any liability (real or assumed) a plantiff might try to claim if the emulator ran their code illegally and that Apple rubber stamped it knowing the possibility. Emulators have always been in that sort of gray-area. Apple is more than just the device manufacturer, all apps through the app-store have them functioning as a distributor.
While some of this (particularly how vauge "core-experience" arguments can be) is a bit unsavory, it seems to be fully within the Terms and Conditions given when the phone is bought and when the AT&T account is opened. My major objection is that the data-plan is not truly unlimited, in that AT&T should more readily disclose the VOIP exclusion (or find a way to debit minutes for VOIP calls) and the limitations on video over 3G (either Apple or AT&T). Weather or not this is acceptable is up to the purchaser, but I can't see how anyone who took the time to actually read any information on the phone or the contract from AT&T wouldn't have expected these kinds of limitations. I certainly understand how folks could be upset about some of this, but I can't fault AT&T or Apple on the disclosure issue.
My second thought is that the App Store 2 week waiting period is not that unreasonable for software deployment. I think developers were completely unreasonable to expect a QA process worth anything under that load to be finished in a few days, and Apple should do their part to prioritize security and compatibility updates over feature or new-release applications. However, as is developers simply need to be more intentional and regimented in their releases and take advantage of Apple's willingness to QA their applications and help them in the long run produce apps that don't suck so bad they never get repeat customers.
I was kind of surprised when TFA said that he felt that 3PO was supposed to be a gay-stereotype. I always considered him more of a sterotypical british gentleman or butler.
As far as R2D2 not "speaking" with human-understandable voices, there are 2 concepts in play. Being a film, for the most part, there is no reason for R2 to speak audibly because as he works with other droids it could be assumed they can communicate through some wireless/radio method, making "speech" unnecessary and inefficent, other than the fact that it is much harder to show radio on the screen than gibberish noises. Having him unable to speak directly to the audience but having 3PO dialouge with him (for instance, in 3PO asks him to watch his language), it carefully peels away the simply utilitarian view of R2 and shows his anthropic qualities slowly and we eventually see that R2 is smart, and brave in ways that 3PO is not. It slowly exposes this quality in a way that develops the character, rather than having R2 come off as some smart ass child-bot.
Thirdly, some people consider not being able to talk as being "cute" like babies. It makes R2 likable when he doesn't really for much of the Ep4-6 series have much that overtly makes (or is designed to make) the audience particularly like or dislike him. For example in the Kirby cartoon the creator specifically required they not give him a voice as to not take away from the "cuteness" that is considered part of the character's success.
Though it is entirely possible that Lucas couldn't find a voice that didn't ascribe too much implied personality to a more utilitarian character. When non-human characters have human voices, you import a lot of understanding based on what you "think" the voice is (e.g. Jar-Jar), rahter than taking it as simply "just a voice."
I think the major difference that the tatics in use by most business software vendors are accepted because they for the most part don't try to engage in device lock-in like DRM'd music does. Once you've gotten a copy of the software, you're free to install it on a computer of your chosing, and when you want to move it to a new PC it is generally not too difficult to do (except for Adobe stuff.) This is not enough to satisfy OSS zealots, but is enough to keep customers relatively happy.
The other issue is that customers don't feel that they ought to have to buy a CD of a cassette the had. They don't feel they ought to have to re-buy Blu-Ray movies they have on DVD or VHS unless there is a significant improvement. When consumers try to move their media to newer platforms and the company actively prohibits them from doing so, and has build a business model on it, it makes people mad.
People don't feel "ripped off" when they can't drop their Chevy Corsica '91 engine into a newer car (maybe you can... I'm not a mechanic) because they see it as a utility, something that eningeering improvements have made the parts truly depreciated. For media, consumers see newer platforms as marginally better ways for companies to make them rebuy something that is artifically depreciated. Computer software fits into that category where one can reasonably expect 20 year old software isn't going to work, and isn't going to (usually) be as compatible as new software on a brand-new computer.
I also think the OP's comments about tactics and focusing on institutional pervasive piracy over individuals has paid off in the publics perception of commercial software and probably been more lucrative when litigation is necessary.
Why is this moderated "Troll?" The OP is correct. The companies are trying to reclassify an activity that has been legal (either truly a right retained by the people or so seldom enforced it is a right by default) to make it a criminal (or severly punished civil) act.
Who gives convicted sex offenders (by the letter of the law) the time of day to argue the appropriateness of the law that places them under that classification. Copyright offenders (under the new law) will be written off as well as people simply trying to escape the consequences of their actions; rather than a first hand, important, discourse a supposed "free" person has to attempt to have the law changed because they believe it is unjust.
If you can put the scarlet letter on your critics, you've just-as-well muzzled them in the eyes of the greater culture (at least in America, and probably Canada).
For me, the choice is simple, I'll do what it takes to get the job done so long as management's expectations and goals assume a 40 hour week. I'll work after my 40 hours if to help out as needs so long as their expection and goal hits that mark. If they every give me grief about being a few minutes late due to traffic, etc... but don't pay me for the 20-30 minutes I worked over the day before, we'll have a problem and I'll never work another second over 5o'clock ever again.
Aside from that, they know the law and if they want something done bad enough to tap over 40 hours, they can pay time and a half, or decide that it can wait until tomorrow.
What I cannot imagine is how an employer can reasonably expect someone to work extra without pay except as part of a "lets keep it friendly and I might need you a little late every now and again and you'll want to ditch out a little early now and again and lets not make a federal case over it" mentality. If you had to contract out work to a plumber, per-se you'd instantly assume they would get paid hourly... period. What I understand even less is geeks who work insane hours knowing their company probably considers them at best, a necessary evil, full well knowing that it is the (legal) responsibility of the employer to either fund enough positions to get the hours of service they feel they need to cover, or fully expect to pay when they use the workers post 40 hour free-time.
I feel that if you are setting the employer's expectation that a technician (or whatever) is willing to work 60 hours' for 40's pay, you're harming all the technicans who do want to pursue outside interests on their own time, and when the day comes that you're ready to scale back to 40... you could have painted yourself into a corner.
It isn't just ad revenue, in some of these cases you can gather useful information as to "which" page in the series lost interest, which ones were linked to by third parties. This can also be done for performance in the case of large-ish images or for pages that scale well (or better) to mobile devices.
Not to say that any of these reasons of-necesity warrant this sort of design, but it isn't always simply revenue. My biggest complaint is where there is a complete lack of a "printer-friendly" option.
This is only scary because it is being implemented "electronicly."
If the iPod/iPhone had a strip inside that turned blue when exposed to moisture or red due to excressive temperature, or tore when disassembled, no one would bat an eye. Items like this are already in use in consumer and industrial electronics.
The problem is how verbose the technical method is (e.g. does it record with GPS where the temperature spiked, or what kind of moisture tripped the sensor) and how it is used or could be used. My only concern however apple does do it, that it stores minimal information and that the documentation clearly state what tolerances the sensors are looking for and if tripped, what the result will be (e.g. Leaving the phone above 120F for over 30 minutes will trip the sensor and invalidate the warranty.)
The advantage to the technical method is the device could warn the user that they are coming close to voiding the warranty before they do (e.g. a countdown when the temperature is too high).
One of the most frequent criticisms I often hear regarding FOSS is that the applications don't "look and feel" like the OS or other software in the ecosystem. They don't always use the system-default Save/Open dialogs, menu style and common controls and for a lot of users, like it or not, gives the perception of out-of-placeness or inferior. Firefox is a prime example where going out of the way to fit into the UI based on the OS has helped user-comfort and therefore adoption.
If Windows 7 is going to implement the ribbon system-wide, it makes sense that OO.org would minimally make this an option, if not the default on the Windows release, even though I am amongst those who are not fans of the ribbon.
The major difference between "educational" games and so called "non-educational" games, is that the developer's goal in educational games is to use the game to teach some "thing" where in non-educational games the purpose is generally the game-itself. This is a completely artifical distinction based on if you're teaching pure "content" (such as learning the colors, or geopgraphy) versus as "skill" (such as memory, or problem solving). For example, if my game is about teaching world geography, I wouldn't want to constrain the player to North America because they are not good at the execution of game (e.g. flying a plane to photograph landmarks). If the goal is teaching memory-through-geography, I would constain them to a small geographic area until they demonstate proficiency. (granted, this is an oversimplification)
The Sim City games are like this... resource management skills are fundamental throughout, but as you go later the balancing, scope and city size make that skill harder to execute, but doesn't require the user to engage in complicated play before reaching the "resource management" stuff.
Also consider the question; "Is this a game that is going to be used directly by schools as part of their cirriculm or is this a game you're hoping kids will come to of their own volition?" It completely changes the level of "overtness" in learning that you can use to get their maximum adoption. This makes the distinction even more important because a teacher does not want users (students) to not reach the educational content for lack of game-playing skills.
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To use the literal case of "snake oil"-- There is nothing illegal about selling snake oil, in and of itself (unless it were to be a dangerous product.) The legal issue is that a snake oil salesman implies that it "performs" some feat (implied warranty for a particular purpose). If the snake oil salesman truly believes that it works, but it can be proven that it does not, he has misrepresented the product. If the snake oil salesman knows it doesn't work, and claims that it does, then he is committing fraud. If a person choose to use this product and did not gain the advertised result, then most people would at least agree they are entitled to a refund or, maybe even damages that resulted due to use. In the case of Mr. Trudeau, it is alleged that his claims are false. Because customers are buying his book "for the purpose of implementing his 'treatments'" the book carries an implied warranty that the content of the text is fit for a particular purpose. If you bought the plans to assemble a boom-box from parts at Radio Shack, and were told that the plans worked, and you followed them properly and it did not produce a boom-box, you could claim that the product did not meet its implied warranty duties. If customers were buying his book for entertainment, not any particular purpose, all the book would need to have is "words" in some narrative format. If he said "I am selling an international anthology of alternative medical practices for historical, literary, or critical purposes" [and it's not my fault if you try them, and should they work, good for you] or "I am selling an international anthology of medical research that is the sole opinion of the individual authors" then it would be a different case. However, someone would have to first make a successful claim that the treatment does not work, or that harm was done by not using an alternative treatment, or harm was directly done by the product (which addresses another issue of strict liability.) In this case, the government is making such a claim, right or wrong. If he was not selling the book, but made it freely available, it would be a pure free-speech issue, which is a much more open to interpretation than fraud or misrepresentation in a transaction.
If you do choose FileNet, opt for the Unix/Oracle implementation. They offer the environment on Windows/MS-SQL but in the implementation I supported (inherited), it was very (I mean very) unstable and tended to crash at the slightest hiccup, and left a very poor impression. There was always a fear that a particular MS patch would kill it which was a security and stability issue that would (likely) be avoided on a mature UNIX platform running only the necessary services. (Disclaimer: Most of my work is in the Windows world). They have a decent API, but it is slow (very slow) for mass imports. There are tools that access the undocumented (unsupported) libraries that are very fast, but run the issue of support. At the time I worked with it, the viewers were unsupported on Vista. FileNet also has the issue of lack of community. If anything goes wrong, you're on the phone with IBM, which is not the style I like when it comes to managing a system. On the other systems I've supported, (LAMP servers, IIS, MSSQL, etc.) there is a lot of online vendor support, community and vibrant forums as a first step. With FN, I was able to come across one forum that was "OK" (filesite.org), and other than that it was a call to IBM or pouring though a stack of dead-tree training manuals. Definitely consider the cost of on site-support and consulting from the vendor as a necessity.
I know it's 1 April and everything but did anyone notice anything strange in the spelling of `Large Hardon Collider`?
This is not necessarily true. I've lived in 4 different US states in the past 6 years. Status updates for a period can be enough to keep that relationship going to the point that if I called them tomorrow it would not be a 2 hour conversation around catching up so much as "Hey, I have a 4 hour layover passing through Las Vegas on my way to Chicago next week, want to try to grab lunch?" or "Saw you were going to a convention in LA, I live about 90 minutes from there, think you'll have time to grab a beer?"
There are many friends who I simply do not have the time to keep up with because they are not good about using their e-mail or social media resources. I simply cannot coordinate calls when I am three time zones away and work two jobs the same way I can send you an e-mail or facebook message (effectively an e-mail) or comment on a post you made while my code is compiling.
Without these tools, I'd loose track of friends I have had and miss opportunities to enjoy their company, pursue business ventures, get information, or other things in meatspace.
Disclaimer: I am a community college instructor in California. The difference is that community colleges already have the infrastructure to teach students who are below-college standard (e.g. have a high school diploma or GED but have serious deficiencies), tend to be more accessible, and are part of the larger K-14 state education system in the eyes of the state than the University system (K-16). I've taught several students who take regular or remedial community college classes in lieu of normal or advanced high school classes simply to get college credit for the exact same knowledge they would get at high school. These students do this in order to cut costs of their general education curriculum or because their high schools are "gang infested hellholes" (to quote a student). They aren't taking community college classes in hopes of making into Harvard or Yale. The problem with this system is that coordination has yet to provide a method where the student can meet 100% of their high school requirements at the community college level. I would propose granting a conditional diploma after passing the High School Exit Exam (which I passed in 8th grade) that would become legit after passing a General Ed curriculum (24 units) that can transfer to a state-school and take less than a year full time, or 2 full time academic years to earn an associates while their peers are still in high school. If you are smart enough to pass the benchmark exam, and disciplined enough to meet the GE requirements at the CC, and don't care about the "high school experience" (or downright dread it), this is a perfect way to utilize the resources efficiently and help these students rather than have them take high school classes to turn around and take the exact same class in college 2 years later.
While an anecdote, at 2 places I have worked, there is a perception (I can't say if it is true or not) that older (particularly mainframe) programmers are unable or unwilling to transfer their skills to the client/server or web platforms, and that they are unwilling or unable to learn newer languages/design patterns. Again, I can't say in a generalizable way if this is more-or-less "true" or not, but I think the perception is harmful to the older class of workers whose technology is being phased out in a lot of enterprises (and industry sectors.) For some programmers, there is also a tendency to "self-select" for specialization based on a particular tool chain or language preference. I know I could be a Java programmer, but I am so unfamiliar with the API that I'd be fairly ineffective until I got up to speed. I don't think many workplaces tend to frequently lower performance goals for this sort of learning curve making programmers avoid developing a broad skill set and focus narrowly. IT also tends to differentiate between web programmers, mainframe gurus, DBAs, server managers, etc. causing a further territoriality and specialization. I would also argue that the rapid pace of obsolescence makes programmers particularly vulnerable to this perception (or reality). In industries where the skill set is more static, or there are minor incremental changes or a large number of legacy installations (such as in HVAC repair or general construction) there is less of a degree of specialization and rapid skill set changes.
Microsoft's strength and weakness has always been that it has allowed any Windows application to run on almost any Windows device with little modification (if any). Windows CE was marketed as "lightweight Windows" but it did not run Windows applications, it ran poor replacements for Windows applications (Pocket Word, Pocket Excel) that were not good enough to replace their PC analogues, but because they were branded as such seemed far inferior. I think their issue was being "too" ahead of the curve, unable to provide a consumer product with the horsepower at a reasonable cost that didn't act like a really useless PC that ran none of their apps and had next to no storage versus a mildly more expensive laptop. (From someone who owned CE 2.1 and PocketPC devices). The devices failed to attract developers. Tablets were expensive, and as the article suggested, were Windows PC with crappy bolt-on pen support that raised the price $1000. Microsoft also has to deal with lackluster hardware releases from vendors looking to maximize short-run profits over market dominance. In every case you see Microsoft trying to make XBOX development like Windows development, Windows Mobile development like Windows development. Apple on the other hand seems content to have a mobile software ecosystem and a "computer" software ecosystem, even though the distinction is based on role/purpose and input method over any profound distinction. In the end, the bar is different. Any Microsoft Tablet will get asked the question "Will it run Office (well)" where Apple is asked "Will it play music, movies and run Facebook." The customers are demanding new ways to use their PC from Microsoft, and the customers are asking apple for media devices.
The fundamental problem is that users want their computer to do things. They want responsive rich media web applications so conventional wisdom to turn off everything but HTML rendering causes their computer to not do stuff it used to be capable of. The second problem is that in order for computers to do things, particularly in networked environments, is that processes could be working with trusted, semi-trusted or untrusted stuff (be-it content, code, whatever, it doesn't matter for the purpose used.) When security tools attempt to figure out what ought to be trusted or not trusted and gets it wrong, you either do something unsafe or you block the user from doing what they want to do (even if you or me would consider what they want to do as foolish or downright dangerous.) When users are expected to indicate what is trusted or not trusted they generally lack the insight to know what to pick, and vendors are at peril of designing annoying software that provides little true security if users always click "yes" causing the unsafe action to happen, or prevents their computer from working as expected, if they always click "no." Sandboxing can be effective to limit access to other application's data, but can greatly limit interoperability and requires the developer make some decisions on behalf of the user, or makes the developer ask the user how isolated the process is from other resources in a way that is meaningful and they they can understand what the consequences in either case will be if they approve (ideally at setup).
I live near this facility (map/image) and it looks more like a gated-resort community than anything. I haven't seen any razor wire, but there are high fences and access is controlled through a gate, and there are cameras on the road and on the fence. For the interested, there is a wiki page that strikes me as being pretty accurate and NPOV.
All of the above... good catch, those would both be better choices in terms. Though I don't know to what degree Microsoft has documented what Win32 (or other) APIs are being utilized by the various methods in the framework in all cases.
Microsoft knows that mobile development is booming right now and their best chance to get into the market is on very accessible powerful development tools rather than the Windows OS which is quickly losing market share. If Microsoft can have mobile developers coding in .NET, having them be familiar with Windows development is trival (since the Framework obstruficates most of the OS API.)
If the Framework gets ported to non-MS platforms, having those developers develop on Visual Studio, on Windows, in Windows eco-systems is additional trivial.
I am absolutely certain that iPhone development is causing iPhone developers to learn and be comfortable with XCode on Mac machines while at the same time creating more skilled Objective-C coders that will be more proficent in writing normal OS X applications.
I am an adjunct instructor teaching Microsoft Excel classes at the community college and found that textbook PowerPoint files were absolutely horible. Aside from that, it does not lend itself to actual demonstration of the skill or for discussion. For hands on classes, there is definately something to be said for actual demonstration, not half-assed screen captures or videos that don't adapt to actual student questions.
In the end, for me, based on the quality and flexibility it just wasn't worth it, even though my lecture prep does take longer than just punting with the vendor's resources.
The only pro is that students could print them, but instead I offer them copies of my lecture notes which are my "digestion" of the text and the examples I'm going to be using in lecture which have a far more conversational tone and step-by-step walkthrough than bullet points and animations.
I don't know about Australia, but after the South Park movie, American cinemas (particularly the corp-owned multiplexes) started checking IDs for R-rated movies. Recently some retailers began following the ESRB ratings for games, but I have never seen a clerk at any store bat an eye over an R-rated (or Unrated) DVD sale to anyone regardless of age.
I always assumed it was just a "gentleman's agreement" to avoid regulation on the film/game industry, but that there was no legal mandate to follow the ratings recommendations. Does anyone know in the US if there is a legal requirement (anywhere?) and likewise in Australia are there restrictions on buying physical DVDs based on their ratings?
The difference is that Apple's website has a "magazine" format that is very easy to duplicate across teams and is conceptually easy to work with and has for a long time, an implicit asumption of uniformality cover-to-cover. Microsoft's webpage is more "web page" like, with less rigourous conceptual designs. Their pages are full dynamic elements, videos, etc... that complement the particular "brand" of software they are selling (notice the website themes within the office suite, the Windows consumer OS, and the Windows Server System and beyond to TechNet and MSDN). Uniformality for navigation's sake is an obvious after-the-fact bolt-on. That being said, MSDN is not conceptually bound to a printed-manual style making it far more usable than Apple's which very much presents like a print-manual converted to HTML.
I would be happy if someone would write something to filter the @ and # characters twitter users have some fascination with that have no relevance on non-twitter interfaces. While they are at it, may I go ahead and recommend something to filter, Mafia Wars and Farmville why they are at it. Facebook already has a pretty low signal-to-noise ratio thats only getting worse without people encrypting what little text is still there. That being said, it sounds very interesting as a practical use of crypto-in-plain-sight, and might raise awareness about cryptography and privacy.
The issue is that if they allow this application, they'll have a harder time justifying denying other applications using interpreted languages. That seems like a non-story to me. Everyone has known from the beginning that that was the case, and that the reason was that if they allowed it, there would be no way of controlling it.
However what I do think is interesting is that they'd allow any emulator at all. Particularly one whose games all depend upon an interpreted language. I'm primarily surprised because of the possibility that someone might be able to get unauthorized apps to run under it, not to mention any liability (real or assumed) a plantiff might try to claim if the emulator ran their code illegally and that Apple rubber stamped it knowing the possibility. Emulators have always been in that sort of gray-area. Apple is more than just the device manufacturer, all apps through the app-store have them functioning as a distributor.
While some of this (particularly how vauge "core-experience" arguments can be) is a bit unsavory, it seems to be fully within the Terms and Conditions given when the phone is bought and when the AT&T account is opened. My major objection is that the data-plan is not truly unlimited, in that AT&T should more readily disclose the VOIP exclusion (or find a way to debit minutes for VOIP calls) and the limitations on video over 3G (either Apple or AT&T). Weather or not this is acceptable is up to the purchaser, but I can't see how anyone who took the time to actually read any information on the phone or the contract from AT&T wouldn't have expected these kinds of limitations. I certainly understand how folks could be upset about some of this, but I can't fault AT&T or Apple on the disclosure issue.
My second thought is that the App Store 2 week waiting period is not that unreasonable for software deployment. I think developers were completely unreasonable to expect a QA process worth anything under that load to be finished in a few days, and Apple should do their part to prioritize security and compatibility updates over feature or new-release applications. However, as is developers simply need to be more intentional and regimented in their releases and take advantage of Apple's willingness to QA their applications and help them in the long run produce apps that don't suck so bad they never get repeat customers.
I was kind of surprised when TFA said that he felt that 3PO was supposed to be a gay-stereotype. I always considered him more of a sterotypical british gentleman or butler.
As far as R2D2 not "speaking" with human-understandable voices, there are 2 concepts in play. Being a film, for the most part, there is no reason for R2 to speak audibly because as he works with other droids it could be assumed they can communicate through some wireless/radio method, making "speech" unnecessary and inefficent, other than the fact that it is much harder to show radio on the screen than gibberish noises. Having him unable to speak directly to the audience but having 3PO dialouge with him (for instance, in 3PO asks him to watch his language), it carefully peels away the simply utilitarian view of R2 and shows his anthropic qualities slowly and we eventually see that R2 is smart, and brave in ways that 3PO is not. It slowly exposes this quality in a way that develops the character, rather than having R2 come off as some smart ass child-bot.
Thirdly, some people consider not being able to talk as being "cute" like babies. It makes R2 likable when he doesn't really for much of the Ep4-6 series have much that overtly makes (or is designed to make) the audience particularly like or dislike him. For example in the Kirby cartoon the creator specifically required they not give him a voice as to not take away from the "cuteness" that is considered part of the character's success.
Though it is entirely possible that Lucas couldn't find a voice that didn't ascribe too much implied personality to a more utilitarian character. When non-human characters have human voices, you import a lot of understanding based on what you "think" the voice is (e.g. Jar-Jar), rahter than taking it as simply "just a voice."
I think the major difference that the tatics in use by most business software vendors are accepted because they for the most part don't try to engage in device lock-in like DRM'd music does. Once you've gotten a copy of the software, you're free to install it on a computer of your chosing, and when you want to move it to a new PC it is generally not too difficult to do (except for Adobe stuff.) This is not enough to satisfy OSS zealots, but is enough to keep customers relatively happy.
The other issue is that customers don't feel that they ought to have to buy a CD of a cassette the had. They don't feel they ought to have to re-buy Blu-Ray movies they have on DVD or VHS unless there is a significant improvement. When consumers try to move their media to newer platforms and the company actively prohibits them from doing so, and has build a business model on it, it makes people mad.
People don't feel "ripped off" when they can't drop their Chevy Corsica '91 engine into a newer car (maybe you can... I'm not a mechanic) because they see it as a utility, something that eningeering improvements have made the parts truly depreciated. For media, consumers see newer platforms as marginally better ways for companies to make them rebuy something that is artifically depreciated. Computer software fits into that category where one can reasonably expect 20 year old software isn't going to work, and isn't going to (usually) be as compatible as new software on a brand-new computer.
I also think the OP's comments about tactics and focusing on institutional pervasive piracy over individuals has paid off in the publics perception of commercial software and probably been more lucrative when litigation is necessary.
Why is this moderated "Troll?" The OP is correct. The companies are trying to reclassify an activity that has been legal (either truly a right retained by the people or so seldom enforced it is a right by default) to make it a criminal (or severly punished civil) act.
Who gives convicted sex offenders (by the letter of the law) the time of day to argue the appropriateness of the law that places them under that classification. Copyright offenders (under the new law) will be written off as well as people simply trying to escape the consequences of their actions; rather than a first hand, important, discourse a supposed "free" person has to attempt to have the law changed because they believe it is unjust.
If you can put the scarlet letter on your critics, you've just-as-well muzzled them in the eyes of the greater culture (at least in America, and probably Canada).
For me, the choice is simple, I'll do what it takes to get the job done so long as management's expectations and goals assume a 40 hour week. I'll work after my 40 hours if to help out as needs so long as their expection and goal hits that mark. If they every give me grief about being a few minutes late due to traffic, etc... but don't pay me for the 20-30 minutes I worked over the day before, we'll have a problem and I'll never work another second over 5o'clock ever again.
Aside from that, they know the law and if they want something done bad enough to tap over 40 hours, they can pay time and a half, or decide that it can wait until tomorrow.
What I cannot imagine is how an employer can reasonably expect someone to work extra without pay except as part of a "lets keep it friendly and I might need you a little late every now and again and you'll want to ditch out a little early now and again and lets not make a federal case over it" mentality. If you had to contract out work to a plumber, per-se you'd instantly assume they would get paid hourly... period. What I understand even less is geeks who work insane hours knowing their company probably considers them at best, a necessary evil, full well knowing that it is the (legal) responsibility of the employer to either fund enough positions to get the hours of service they feel they need to cover, or fully expect to pay when they use the workers post 40 hour free-time.
I feel that if you are setting the employer's expectation that a technician (or whatever) is willing to work 60 hours' for 40's pay, you're harming all the technicans who do want to pursue outside interests on their own time, and when the day comes that you're ready to scale back to 40... you could have painted yourself into a corner.
It isn't just ad revenue, in some of these cases you can gather useful information as to "which" page in the series lost interest, which ones were linked to by third parties. This can also be done for performance in the case of large-ish images or for pages that scale well (or better) to mobile devices.
Not to say that any of these reasons of-necesity warrant this sort of design, but it isn't always simply revenue. My biggest complaint is where there is a complete lack of a "printer-friendly" option.
This is only scary because it is being implemented "electronicly."
If the iPod/iPhone had a strip inside that turned blue when exposed to moisture or red due to excressive temperature, or tore when disassembled, no one would bat an eye. Items like this are already in use in consumer and industrial electronics.
The problem is how verbose the technical method is (e.g. does it record with GPS where the temperature spiked, or what kind of moisture tripped the sensor) and how it is used or could be used. My only concern however apple does do it, that it stores minimal information and that the documentation clearly state what tolerances the sensors are looking for and if tripped, what the result will be (e.g. Leaving the phone above 120F for over 30 minutes will trip the sensor and invalidate the warranty.)
The advantage to the technical method is the device could warn the user that they are coming close to voiding the warranty before they do (e.g. a countdown when the temperature is too high).
One of the most frequent criticisms I often hear regarding FOSS is that the applications don't "look and feel" like the OS or other software in the ecosystem. They don't always use the system-default Save/Open dialogs, menu style and common controls and for a lot of users, like it or not, gives the perception of out-of-placeness or inferior. Firefox is a prime example where going out of the way to fit into the UI based on the OS has helped user-comfort and therefore adoption.
If Windows 7 is going to implement the ribbon system-wide, it makes sense that OO.org would minimally make this an option, if not the default on the Windows release, even though I am amongst those who are not fans of the ribbon.
The major difference between "educational" games and so called "non-educational" games, is that the developer's goal in educational games is to use the game to teach some "thing" where in non-educational games the purpose is generally the game-itself. This is a completely artifical distinction based on if you're teaching pure "content" (such as learning the colors, or geopgraphy) versus as "skill" (such as memory, or problem solving). For example, if my game is about teaching world geography, I wouldn't want to constrain the player to North America because they are not good at the execution of game (e.g. flying a plane to photograph landmarks). If the goal is teaching memory-through-geography, I would constain them to a small geographic area until they demonstate proficiency. (granted, this is an oversimplification)
The Sim City games are like this... resource management skills are fundamental throughout, but as you go later the balancing, scope and city size make that skill harder to execute, but doesn't require the user to engage in complicated play before reaching the "resource management" stuff.
Also consider the question; "Is this a game that is going to be used directly by schools as part of their cirriculm or is this a game you're hoping kids will come to of their own volition?" It completely changes the level of "overtness" in learning that you can use to get their maximum adoption. This makes the distinction even more important because a teacher does not want users (students) to not reach the educational content for lack of game-playing skills.