Perhaps it took so long because of the principal's Catch-22 attitude about Cody's guilt -- she said, 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.
I like to believe that, in America at least, we avoid this "Catch-22" wherein we assume from the get go that the alleged criminal is innocent until proven guilty. Which gives them no motive to lie. After the fact, it may be revealed they were lying but you have to prove it first. Most of the time, they are caught within their lies and their guilt is exposed that way.
Relying on one instance of evidence that relies heavily on technology, is a pretty shaky case in my opinion. The principal has graciously illustrated why this is a risky assumption to make. I don't think I need to expound on my general feelings of how the RIAA uses the same techniques in their settle out of court cases but there is definitely a direct relationship here.
I feel that, as a society, we don't give our children enough credit. I've posted about this before and I'm sure I'll post about it again. If you don't apply the same ideas of justice & freedom to children, how can you expect them to grow up with those same virtues instilled? You can't, really. Once they turn 18, they still remember a lot prior to being 18. Any injustices they suffered are probably not forgotten.
While I have not raised a child, I have volunteered at local grade schools to teach the children about engineering. I go and set up some sort of challenge that involves engineering with limited resources. One of my most horrific experiences wasn't watching some child verbally or physically assault another child, it was actually a teacher/student exchange. The challenge was to build a tower out of cards and after several failures and few successes, I decided to wrap up with some basics in mechanical engineering. I asked the class why they chose a square structure to build their tower in. One particularly energetic imp told me it was clearly the most stable. I corrected him and said that actually a dome is a more stable structure. But he persisted and asked why were 99% of buildings made in a square formation. I really didn't have an answer... so I kind of filibustered. But the teacher cut off his questions and told him he was flat out wrong. And the kid responded with something on the order of, "You say that because that's all you ever expect out of me. You just like it when I'm wrong and the other kids are right. That's what you like." And I waited for the teacher to correct him. To tell him that this wasn't the case. But the teacher just sat there and stared at him. After an awkward minute, I proceeded but I never forgot that exchange. The kid had clearly demonstrated a very astute analysis of building structure so much so that I couldn't reply to him intelligently. I don't care what his history was, the teacher seemed to pigeonhole him back into being "just wrong."
I pretty much blame myself for not encouraging the kid to research it on his own. But I thought about it a lot afterwards and wondered if we don't give our children enough credit. Does this happen often? Do children get stereotyped as "the problem child" with no possible second chance? Are they doomed once teachers look for this type of behavior. I hope not but this story with the principal assuming the kid was wrong is just another example, though my personal example is probably a case of no exoneration.
They should make a big deal about blocking Wikipedia--announce it to the student body. Then tell students that they are forbidden from accessing it at all. Pick some other sites too, like MySpace or Hotmail or a news site like CNN or the BBC News.
Then turn around and in the students' social studies classes, teach them about free speech and the horrors of censorship. Be sure to explain what rights an American Citizen has and how many people have demonstrated or fought and died for these rights to remain intact.
Then sit back and wait. Wait for the students to put this together and realize that they don't have to put up with your censorship shit.
When someone holds a demonstration, make a big deal about it and herald them for being an American Citizen. Ask the rest of the students why they waived their right to read Wikipedia as free speech. Who cares why they wanted to read it or even whether they wanted to read it all, just ask them why they waived a right they knew they had. Make them think about it.
Then, if you've got enough time, ask yourself why you've been waiving so many rights in the name of The DMCA, The Patriot Act & The Patriot Act II. Why did you waive your rights in the name of national security and the comfort of huge corporations?
Go ahead, take your time.
If you're advocating blocking Wikipedia in a serious manner, please do explain how you're going to--at the same time--teach the students about the rights they have. It will entertain me, the excuses that fascists come up with always have.
"It's for your own good." just doesn't suffice, in my opinion. Who's determining what's "my own good" again? Oh, you want to. Right. It's called 'responsibility' and it comes with living so let the students have a helping of it.
As for the person asking the question, I don't know about you but I went to a high school where the first thing we were taught is that we are responsible for the information we present in a paper. The student is responsible for citing sources & verifying that the source is reliable. If you can't do that, you're going to end up reading The Onion with either hilarious or catastrophic results. This is a valuable life lesson, let the students learn it early when the consequence is a bad grade instead of a lawsuit. If you told the students Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, give them an F if they use one single reference from it. How can they argue with you, the instructor?
"Blah blah blah politics. Bitch bitch bitch IBM did this so now we do it."
I read this hoping for some key points in distinguishing the functionality or benefits versus costs in using either format.
Nope.
The closest they get to that is "ODF is tightly tied to OOo." Oh, no! Not that! You know, that argument is null and void, right? Because these document formats are supposed to be open, like the names of both of them imply. Who cares if it's not yet integrated into your product, either format should allow that. It is, in fact, confusing to me why they don't let both formats exist and allow the government bodies to pick whatever the hell the want to store their data in. That's all this is, a political issue which is why it's filed in the politics section I guess.
If Microsoft truly believed their product to be superior to the alternative, they would sit back and let California make the mistake. Then, when everything falls apart, they could step in and save the day, while at the same time setting a precident for one format being better than the other. But, we all know that's not going to happen because I haven't heard Massachussetts hurting due to their choice. So, I guess Mr. Ballmer is going to have to set his fears aside & simply come to the harsh realization that another community developed format is just as good or better than their format. Heads up, ODF community, he just may fucking kill you.
And I certainly don't appreciate them demonizing IBM. "Big bad evil corporation launches national campaign to force their consumers into using something!" Pot calling the kettle black, in my opinion. If you could track the amount of money I have paid to a company--directly or indirectly--I would wager that I've paid IBM far less than Microsoft and I feel that IBM has done far more for me than Microsoft.
Shut up and let the consumer decide, Microsoft. Nothing's wrong with unbiased comparisons in helping them decide but you've got a conflict of interest here so I highly doubt anyone will swallow your tripe.
Yet the furrowed brows and promises of senators of investigations have come to nothing, even though the only people seemingly in favor of the monopoly are ICANN and VeriSign.
Kind of reminds me of much ado about Exxonmobil. Say, whatever happened with those congressional hearings about an $8 billion dollar profit for a single quarter? Well, it turns out that over the past 25 years oil companies paid more than $2.2 trillion in taxes (adjusted for inflation). That is more than three times what they earned in profits during the same period.
This sounds a lot like the same thing, we have one company roughly running some kind of monopoly on something we all kind of take for granted but I'm sure the government and government organizations like ICANN see some pretty big tax kickbacks from Verisign. If another player were to enter the market and *gasp* actually turn it into a competition market, then these taxes might be questioned, challenged & lost! And the consumer might end up spending $2 a year instead of $6! Personally, I think the major companies are the consumers and since I don't ever see myself owning more than one domain name unless I start a company, I don't care.
With complaints about the pair running back to 2002, what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously?
First off, don't call it a 'ripoff' because that makes it sound like $6 would break you. And if you're earning minimum wage in America, that's probably not the case. Instead, press this to your elected officials as a monopoly. And when they put on the show and get all huffy, actually make sure they follow through with it! If they don't, write about it and keep bitching. I think the problem is that not a lot of people own a domain that they have to register, I'm sure the vast majority are owned by companies or businesses and that means less votes. So it's kind of a lost cause because the politicians know that this way A) earns their government money and B) doesn't matter to many voters. But if you could get the elderly to care about this, that would all be null & void because there is no voting power like the aging baby boomers:-)
I don't mind paying for what I use, but I'm looking for a list of cable and DSL providers that won't leave you high and dry like Comcast does if you go over the official or unofficial limits.
Well, since it's highly unlikely my similar story I submitted this morning will be accepted after this is the on the front page, I'll just submit it to Slashdot as a comment.
Carreiro said he received a message from a Comcast Security Assurance representative in December, who warned him that he was hogging too much of the company's bandwidth and needed to cut down. When Carreiro contacted customer service about the call, they had no idea what he was talking about and suggested it was a prank phone call. Unconvinced, Carreiro contacted Comcast several more times, but was again told there was no problem. A month later, he woke up to a dead Internet connection. Customer service directed him to the Security Assurance division, which Carreiro said informed him he would now be without service for one year.
This is quite alarming to me, considering that I am forced into using a particular ISP based on some deal my neighborhood made many years before I moved here.
And, if I may elaborate, I feel I am a hog though I have never ever been threatened with this action before. What interests me is that they have my bandwidth capped and even that cap seems to fluctuate with how much my neighborhood is using. But, I'm pretty sure that the cable modem I have is physically capped at a low level because I've read stories of people uncapping them and being pretty much black listed. If that's what these "hogs" are doing, then I have little sympathy for them. The only time I had an uncapped connection was when I was in Bailey Hall at the University of Minnesota my freshman year. They had just installed ethernet and I soon discovered that they trusted me a little more than they should have. An unproductive dumbass freshman with a bass amp/speaker combo, a computer, a modded dreamcast and an uncapped connection to mIRC/morpheus/gnutella/etc made for some interesting nights... rest assured that rooms adjacent to N410 knew the 8 bit emulated glory of contra theme song as I destroyed Red Falcon night after night.
Back to the topic, though, I have often used BitTorrent while playing World of Warcraft and using Ventrillo with no problems. Me and my roommates pay for the highest upload/download rates but, as I've said before, we never get close to those numbers.
Here's a better question, how does your ISP handle telephone calls by unsatisfied customers who complain that in the middle of the day using a third party site, their bandwidth is pinched FAR BELOW what they've been paying for? In my case, as a current customer of Cox, I can speak from first hand experience that those calls go largely unnoticed--although I've had different results from different providers at different locations.
King Khazunga: You must be very very young my dear. eldavojohn: Man. King Khazunga: Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there? eldavojohn: I'm 24. King Khazunga: What? eldavojohn: I'm 24. I'm not very very young. King Khazunga: Well I can't just call you "my dear". eldavojohn: Well you could say "eldavojohn". King Khazunga: I didn't know you were called eldavojohn. eldavojohn: Well you didn't bother to find out did you? King Khazunga: I did say sorry about the "very very young my dear", but from behind you looked... eldavojohn: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior. King Khazunga: Well I am king. eldavojohn: Oh, king eh? Very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.
Hmm, maybe it's the other way around.. maybe it's just the companies aren't used to play by the law.
That's entirely possible. I could conceive very corrupt practices being in place causing the need for these fines and that would explain the number of them immediately after the EU formed. However, I read stories about delayed launches of Xboxes or PS3s and it's all in the name of the consumer... or is it? I mean, you could be saying, "Thank god that they're protecting the consumer from price fixing" yet the people waiting for the product just seem peeved that it's delayed. And the companies that are trying to do business don't like that one bit either.
So if the companies aren't playing by the law, fine the hell out of them. I only point out that this will probably come down to Apple sacrificing selection or release dates just to have a common price fixing scheme and the customer will get a better deal but suffer in quality of service. Should it really be up to a government commission to decide how Apple works this trade off? I honestly don't think it should be but that's just me. I think Apple had the option to work this one of two ways and now the government is making that decision for them.
It doesn't sit well with me, but I'm a fat stupid American so I guess I'm not in any place to comment.
I'm not saying that none of these fines are unjustified but I am saying that, if I may opine, the EU has been issuing a lot of fines. With this recent Apple one, it does seem as though Apple had no choice and if they aren't given an alternative to losing their contracts with record companies for the sake of running one Europe encompassing store, then I don't blame them. On the surface, the EU Commissions seem to be discouraging big businesses from selling things like XBoxes, PS3s or iTunes inside all of the countries. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I guess time will tell...
It's long been known that Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, etc. contain a vast wealth of programming talent. Look at the rankings of the world wide programming contests. Unfortunately, with their dismal economies, these talents are often used for ill rather than good. I, myself, have two anecdotal stories of my friend's user accounts being hacked by unknown parties in the Ukraine. All in the name of 50 USD.
Why?
Surely, I reasoned, with the amount of time they took to set up that scam and avoid authorities, they could have gotten a job like I have and done something good for even more cash--but, that's my naïve American attitude for you. The job market probably doesn't exist there where they live.
Nothing would make me happier than to see these people given an opportunity to move somewhere close to make money, help their economy, establish an industry/infrastructure for future generations & to get these programmers off the street and into a job... however, that could just be my naïve American attitude again.
On an offtopic note, I used to "cool" my computers in Minnesota by placing them next to the window during the winters, I'm certain you could cut down cooling costs in Siberia using similar strategies.
I recall this being submittedtwice at the beginning of the month and I had skimmed the full report[PDF WARNING!].
If you look over that, you'll see what specific software they did their trials with, the security issues, concerns about the SCO case, the scope of their trials & what recommendations they left.
However, the only section being discussed in the article is this one:
Hardware resources and the "Green" agenda
One of the benefits frequently put forward for the use of Open Source Software is the
level of resources needed to support it. This means that for equivalent Open Source
and Microsoft Windows systems, the Open Source system will require less memory
and a slower processor speed for the same functionality.
Open Source operating systems such as Linux do not usually have the regular major
upgrades that are a feature of Windows, and thus do not have the requirement that
goes with these upgrades for a new or upgraded computer to run them. This means
that a computer running Linux can have a significantly longer working life than an
equivalent computer running Windows. This has the potential to impact significantly
on costs, including purchase of software and hardware, and indirectly by reducing
business disruption whilst implementing change and upgrading. There are also
potential Green Agenda benefits, through reducing the energy and resources consumed
in manufacturing replacement equipment, and reducing landfill requirements and costs
arising from disposal of redundant equipment.
Industry observers quote a typical hardware refresh period for Microsoft Windows
systems as 3-4 years; a major UK manufacturing organisation quotes its hardware
refresh period for Linux systems as 6-8 years.
Aside from that, the report has your basic run of the mill attitude of OSS being great financially & security wise but, oh, it would take so many resources to train everyone:
Lessons learned: Adoption of Open Source, particularly for the desktop,
requires investment in planning, training of users, development of skills for
implementation and support, and detailed consideration of migration and
interoperability issues.
First let me say that the part where the researchers say "Get me the president!" isn't upon the first discovery of an impending disaster. It's usually after the data has been double checked & verified by other sources (if possible).
So, if your manager turns these reports over to upper management or shareholders & these have dire consequences upon how your department is viewed--then maybe it's not such a bad idea to double check the equipment or software.
Also, you're employed for a reason. If your manager ever handed over a faulty report, who's ass is on the line? Probably not yours. It's their ass that should get canned if they give faulty information. Now, if your ass was on the line and some outlying data came out in a report, would you constantly double check it?
And, has it ever been wrong before? If this is the twentieth time they've asked you to check it and it's never been wrong before, then maybe they're overdoing it. But if it's been faulty before, give them some credit for just trying to get to the bottom of things. Maybe this isn't the blame game, maybe this is just extreme caution. I don't get this kind of treatment where I work.
The sad part of it is that they're your manager & if they're blaming you, then they're probably saying that to the managers above them also. However, if I were upper management, I'd see through that and can your manager for their inability to take responsibility for those reporting to them.
Also remember that in our system the only way to challenge a law as unconstitutional is to break it.
And I'm certain that the people who you're asking to break these laws are afraid that they'll be the only one and end up in jail or worse.
We should have 140,000 people in jail right now for talking about them...
I would wager that the FBI sent out initial "test letters" about clients to companies that--if necessary--they knew they could get a court order to acquire anyways. Once the company complied, the FBI probably evaluated the resistance said company gave. A low resistance would indicate that at anytime, the FBI could keep playing the same card (probably on the same individual) and continually receive information whether a court order would back them up in the end or not. I'm guessing the number of letters does not reflect the number of individuals who partook in the release of information.
As perverse as it may sound, I would also wager that there are individuals out there who would reply to these letters instantly and with a sense of pride for serving their country. I am very interested if the letters convey this attitude about this request for information. If they do, in fact, inform the individual that this is a matter of national security & that they will be bringing justice to the enemies of the United States, then I hope they are eventually published so we can all have a good laugh and that they might serve as a reminder for victims of future schemes.
... and I feel I need to focus on a particular field.
Why?
Personally, I value breadth over depth. And I'm going to propose a reason why everyone should also: in the world of computer science, at any minute a once vital skill could be obsolete. Granted, it doesn't happen often (as we still need workers to maintain cobol & fortran code) but, instead of spending my free time hunched over Enterprise Java Bean projects learning their delicate intricacies, I find myself learning about Ruby, Spring, Hibernate, etc. Now, I might not be an expert in any of these fields but I may be glad when their time comes. All good things come to an end--and if EJBs were to be retired, I'd certainly like to know my way around these other frameworks & tools. I think the same can be said about fields of computer science. Be wary of the web developer that doesn't know the first thing about networks & server/client communication--that's often a pitfall for security.
So if you want my honest opinion about which "are hot or not," I think they're all pretty damn hot and I bleieve you can find money in any job where you make yourself usefull & valuable to a decent business. I find them all attractive because I enjoy setting up networks in my house and playing network administrater even though I don't do it at my job. I love networking Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. and I like toying around with different databases. I love to start new projects that rarely go anywhere but leave me with more understanding of how technologies or products work. I'm not a "trained expert" at any of them though, most importantly, I feel that I could easily become one if a situation deemed it necessary. If you don't enjoy doing some of these things--DON'T DO THEM. Who cares if they pay alot or are "hot"? I'd rather die happy & poor than rich & sad.
Is there any IT career that I should consider more than the others?
Of course there is, it's the career you enjoy the most:-) If you're honestly worried about having a job and aren't confident in yourself, learn Java. It might die tomorrow (who knows?) but I've seen mountains of code and somebody's gotta maintain that or at least translate several years from now. Not the most glorious job but it would certainly pay the bills. The language is still in use and I've seen people hired by simply writing "Expert in Java" on their resume (whether it was true or not).
Is it a better path to focus on moving into management?
The company I work for is unique in the respect that I am allowed to grow on one of two paths. One is a functional manager that has many people reporting to them (think Lumberg from Office Space). The other is a technical leader--one with degrees & experience implementing ideas. The latter is actually the kind of leadership I desire to fulfill. While it may be more difficult to pursue this "other" kind of management, I hope a lot more companies offer pay equivalent to their technical leaders and recognize them as being just as important as your traditional managers. Technical leaders are the Chief Engineers on projects, the "go to guys" in any scenario where you have technical questions/problems, the subject matter experts, the scientists. The traditional path are the project managers, the leaders who never have to prove themselves, the people who protect you from upper management and who, eventually, become upper management. If I ever found myself interviewing for another company, I would definitely ask them about positions available for technical leaders and, from the sound of your question, this may be something you desire also.
Steals SSL data using advanced Winsock2 functionality
State-of-the-art, modularized trojan code
Spread through IE browser exploits
etc...
When I read the Slashdot summary, I was initially concerned that I may be at risk. But then I noticed the above three lines and realized there was no risk since I don't use IE.
But, in the end, if this is an exploit utilizing the very basic network DLL that windows provides for socket connections (Winsock2--which is what I assume all network applications eventually link against in Windows) then why aren't other browsers at risk?
I know Firefox is awesome & more secure & all that jazz but I haven't done enough network programming to know the nitty gritty details of it. Does anyone know why, if this trojan is exploiting the basic socket connection library that the Windows API provides, all browsers aren't potential victims?
I mean, it makes sense to introduce some sort of security that never ever lets anything but the browser's code access the interfaces to these libraries... is IE really that flawed?
Programmers must begin to develop applications that take full advantage of the increasing number of cores present in modern computers.
I'm a developer. I may not be the greatest one but I enjoy it. This declaration baffles me.
You choose to go with a multi-threaded application when it is necessary. Anyone who just starts adding threads because they feel they need to utilize the number of cores is a complete idiot in my book. Hell, why don't we just put spin locks in there so your CPU usage shoots up and it looks like I'm using it to its full potential?
My point is that there have been a few applications I've written that require a multi-threaded solution. Perhaps this API would have made my life easier but I doubt it as I had to pretty much structure by hand each thread. There are frameworks, graphical libraries and that also use multi-threading that the scheduler has taken care of in the past. Hurray for multi-core if you use those.
A good programmer keeps things as simple as possible. They will be easier to maintain in the future. I'm afraid that this is unneeded layer of abstraction or some nut case trying to "utilize cores" for the sake of it. No one has only one application running at one time. The OS is usually running, you have a network process, etc. If I write my application to use one core, I'm giving the user more options to do with the other cores whatever he wants. Let the scheduler work with the futuristic hardware and sort that crap out.
Also, not everyone is multi-core already. Take use into consideration please!
Allow me to be the first to say that it's both biological and philosophical.
What remains to be seen is where the one starts and the other begins.
You might be able to prove to me that great apes & monkeys have this sense of "humanity" or--for lack of a better term--"monkey-anity." Like the basic tenants of it where you don't kill babies or you starve yourself if it saves someone like you.
But I'm going to find it hard to believe that monkeys have an advanced sense of specific morals like you should or shouldn't file share because it helps or hurts the artists.
I haven't read both these books and I've only briefly read the article but I would find it interesting to understand how our morality evolved or how localized concepts came about. I guess it also has implications connecting us to animals which I don't have a problem with because I don't eat or kill these animals. This news might anger some people but don't tell me that you've never seen a good dog adhere to morals that seemed to be ingrained in them.
I'd like to see this area explored but I think the biggest issue is that morals are often anecdotal or localized making them hard to quantify or generalize. It's the same way with the human race, so don't be so surprised. More power to these researchers even if all they are doing is documenting cases of basic morals in animals.
December 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Calendar) Coincidence?
Yes, coincidence. I was first exposed to the-world-will-end-in-2012 when I read Graham's book Fingerprints of the Gods. I wasn't sold on his numerology.
Let me break it down for you: the Mayans had a very advanced & complex calendar that took into account a lot of different cycles and even some of the most extraordinary hiccups that come with man's attempt at keeping track of time. For the Gregorian calendar, we have leap years except we skip one every four hundred years and even with that in place I think we lose a day every 8,000 years. And you will find that every model has some special issues.
So, back to the Mayans, their measurements of days came in sets of 13, contrary to our sets of 7 days in a week. So the world is no more likely to end on 13.0.0.0.0 than it was on the new years even in year seven. Just because 13 was always the last number in their cycles just means that we start a new cycle. No cataclysmic event needed to mark it. The cycle simply repeats and they most likely go to 1.0.0.0.0 there's no such thing as overflow in their calendar.
Fun hokey astrological implications? Yes. Cold hard scientific data pointing to the end of the world? No.
Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius.
Where do they get this factor of three from? Yes, nickel plants harm the environment. So do steel plants. But I think that the Inco plant, though terrible for the environment, provides more nickel than just for the Prius cars. And then I understand that this material is shipped around the world to make the battery. I don't see the math where the author concludes that the amount of materials processed at the Inco plant are three times that of what is processed for the hummer's equivalent parts or the gasoline that may need to be burned in absence of the battery.
But the article doesn't analyze the manufacturing lines of the Hummer nor the rest of the materials of the Prius. If you want to establish facts, do comprehensive research before you publish an article. The author sounds less concerned with establishing facts and holding people accountable than just firing off quotes that cause people to raise their eyebrows. I read this article and he raises some interesting points but doesn't back them up with hard facts & numbers other than what he read in the CNW report.
Curiously, the article doesn't mention any specific problems. I'm racking my tiny brain right now to think of some problem that isn't desired by the RIAA.
I submit to you the anecdotal evidence of my sister's "iPod." She purchased songs through iTMS and attempted to move the DRM'd files onto her SanDisk MP3 Player. Then she wondered why it didn't work. It didn't work because the files have digital rights management & only brand specific players will play it--and vice versa.
You know, right now iPods are probably the most popular portable music device. But I don't know of any other music download DRM services that they work with. So if some third party download service called Musicload is reporting that 75% of problem calls are DRM related, I'm going to wager that every single call went a little something like "Do you have an iPod?" "No." "I'm sorry, iPod doesn't support our DRM." (or the German equivalent). In fact, on their site, I don't see an iPod as being supported.
I think a DRM standard that everyone adopts would avoid these issues but I don't forsee that happening in the future. It benefits Apple somewhat because they can have a great service or a great player and reap the market. I don't blame them, however, because they do a fine job on both ends. I am concerned about any sort of free market existing here.
In the end, the RIAA wants these problems. They don't want you docking a player with many computers and soaking up the files. They want one player associated with one computer associated with one account and any attempt to anything else should wipe everything off the face of the planet. Why? Money. Somehow the consumer no longer has a voice.
SoundExchange, an entity that collects royalties from digital music broadcasters and distributes them to rights holders, has said the ruling was fair and that the rapid growth in advertising revenues from online music broadcasting would more than allow webcasters to cover the new fees.
SoundExchange pointed to research finding that those ad revenues grew from $50 million in 2003 to $500 million last year.
I listen to Minnesota Public Radio's The Current nearly 10 hours a day on average. I don't hear any advertisements. How does SoundExchange's logic apply to NPR when they aren't making any money off of advertising?
I donate $120 to The Current yearly, if we're talking a couple cents a song, I'm not extremely worried that they can't pay that but I still think that public radio should be able to avoid this. I've learned about so many good bands via that channel! For the sake of all musicians I haven't heard yet, I hope internet NPR doesn't die because of this.
IANAL, so could someone explain to me how the heck something like this could be admitted as evidence?
I'm not a lawyer either but if I were in her shoes, I would simply claim I was working on writing my first novel--a murder mystery. I had to do some research and, hence, the searches.
Someone happened to murder my husband in a similar fashion (he was a very detestable man, everyone hated him and as a result I suffered at home). There's your shadow of a doubt.
But, oddly enough, I've seen what the courts allow the RIAA & MPAA to submit as evidence (server logs with IP addresses) to prosecute people and, at least in those cases, that's all the evidence they need! Considering this, am I shocked that a legally requisitioned computer can be submitted & used as evidence? Not really--though I should be. It's a shame what the "Justice System" is becoming these days.
I guess I could stretch this and look for people who search for "to build a fire" and charge them with all unsolved arsons in their area. Boy scouts & Jack London fans beware!
I am severely impressed with Illinois' capability of assessing a situation so quickly & flawlessly. They already claim an annual cost savings of U.S. $2.1 million [proprietarily locked DOC warning] for five years ($10.5 million total) by using Microsoft's technologies! Why am I impressed? Well, they didn't even have to try anything else out to discover this! If they did, this case study doesn't show any of it. That document (if you read it) only makes claims but backs it up with nothing. I laugh at the very idea of it being titled a "Case Study."
You know, where I work, if you make a statement like "would save our company $10 million" you kind of need to make a business case. A large part of the business case is having micro experiments & demonstrations & data to present to back up your business case. In fact, it's a lot like the scientific process where you present facts that prove your argument. Granted, it's not required to be that rigorous but you usually have to get those to agree with you through this.
If I were a tax paying Illini and that document was the only thing persuading me that my government should use Microsoft products, I would bitch. That's just me, though. I think precisely what this Joseph Campbell needs to do is a "science project" as he calls it. For some reason they're avoiding a "business science project" and I'm really questioning his motivation for circumventing that.
If he's trying to clear his name, he's doing a bad job of it.
I found an article by him in which I hoped to hear his logic and reasoning against global warming.
He claims it is just a natural cycle. That he's seen two of these in his career and he'll see one more before he dies. If his "death threat" was someone saying that he won't see temperature returning to normal before he dies, I don't think it was a death threat.
I can't find a formal report of his research but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If this is his argument, he leaves out a lot of things that need to be explained to me before I let it go. Like, why are polar bears suddenly on the endangered species list? What's happening to all the snow on the tops of mountains? Where are the ice glaciers (with ice that has been around for thousands if not millions of years) going? What is his retort to the CO2 levels being their highest ever--even after looking at ice core samples?
His article only mentions a professor from MIT but not what his criticisms are.
If their work is being derided, I want to know what their work is. I'm a skeptic also, if these people are being published in newspapers, you would think that they wouldn't waste their time on death threats and counter-counter-criticisms but would instead try to get the truths they have been finding in their research out to the public. If you're conducting good science that, in and of itself, will clear your name in the end.
The more I search for information on Timothy Ball, the more he seems like he's playing just as dirty as the people he's fighting. Check out his lawsuit for a journal publishing a letter. I feel we're not hearing the full story here.
When I'm at work and I enter situations in which someone is decrying someone else and vice versa, I just present everyone with facts. If I had done research and I received death threats, I would submit to major newspapers two things: my research published with permission to reprint it & the death threats in their original form. Nothing could boost my efforts to get the truth out there more. The fact that I see a PhD and scientist spending more time saying his life is in danger than presenting me with his findings tells me a lot about what his motives are.
He was published, I guess in Ecological Complexity which I do not have access to. If anyone has papers from his work, I would love to see it--otherwise I'm going to tune this soap opera out as emotional noise in what should be a stoic process.
Question everything. Question both sides. And if you have something that is true, present it. I'm not calling him a liar, I just can't call him anything right now because all I can find are stories about who called who what.
this isnt going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month. training staff to use an entirly new system takes a lot of time and money. i will be supprised if we see this take effect before this time next year
Well, I'm not a systems integrator in real life but I've taken classes. One of the big things to consider here is the potential for an intermediary stage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Google's Apps are largely platform independent. What this means is that I can think of an instantly perfect intermediary stage--instruct the employees to use Google Apps while they still have XP and old Office applications on their machines. But, you know, give them a hard date by which everyone should be using Google Apps (oh, there's always problem workers but leave that to middle management). I assume the large thing these people rely on their computers for is simply these editing suites so once that barrier is broken, install Linux and give them quick 8 hour orientation classes in how to do the same things in Linux that you used to do in Windows (pretty minimal, I assume).
Other option is just Vista & the new Office. Where at some point you just have to install the new Office (I don't think old & new can be installed at the same time) and make them use it. Now, while I'm sure Vista is more similar to XP than Linux and the Office applications are probably similar also, you know there's going to be bumps.
That said, I don't think the transition to Google Apps on Linux would be any more painful than the transition to Vista running Office. I suppose time will tell though. Hopefully my assumptions are correct and this sparks interest on this huge cost savings?
I guess if you really wanted to promote Linux, you would write tutorials on how to take advantage of this switch to Vista/Office and how to put your workers on Linux/Google Apps. When you make cheap and extremely convenient, they will come.
Slashdot Mirror
I like to believe that, in America at least, we avoid this "Catch-22" wherein we assume from the get go that the alleged criminal is innocent until proven guilty. Which gives them no motive to lie. After the fact, it may be revealed they were lying but you have to prove it first. Most of the time, they are caught within their lies and their guilt is exposed that way.
Relying on one instance of evidence that relies heavily on technology, is a pretty shaky case in my opinion. The principal has graciously illustrated why this is a risky assumption to make. I don't think I need to expound on my general feelings of how the RIAA uses the same techniques in their settle out of court cases but there is definitely a direct relationship here.
I feel that, as a society, we don't give our children enough credit. I've posted about this before and I'm sure I'll post about it again. If you don't apply the same ideas of justice & freedom to children, how can you expect them to grow up with those same virtues instilled? You can't, really. Once they turn 18, they still remember a lot prior to being 18. Any injustices they suffered are probably not forgotten.
While I have not raised a child, I have volunteered at local grade schools to teach the children about engineering. I go and set up some sort of challenge that involves engineering with limited resources. One of my most horrific experiences wasn't watching some child verbally or physically assault another child, it was actually a teacher/student exchange. The challenge was to build a tower out of cards and after several failures and few successes, I decided to wrap up with some basics in mechanical engineering. I asked the class why they chose a square structure to build their tower in. One particularly energetic imp told me it was clearly the most stable. I corrected him and said that actually a dome is a more stable structure. But he persisted and asked why were 99% of buildings made in a square formation. I really didn't have an answer
I pretty much blame myself for not encouraging the kid to research it on his own. But I thought about it a lot afterwards and wondered if we don't give our children enough credit. Does this happen often? Do children get stereotyped as "the problem child" with no possible second chance? Are they doomed once teachers look for this type of behavior. I hope not but this story with the principal assuming the kid was wrong is just another example, though my personal example is probably a case of no exoneration.
Then turn around and in the students' social studies classes, teach them about free speech and the horrors of censorship. Be sure to explain what rights an American Citizen has and how many people have demonstrated or fought and died for these rights to remain intact.
Then sit back and wait. Wait for the students to put this together and realize that they don't have to put up with your censorship shit.
When someone holds a demonstration, make a big deal about it and herald them for being an American Citizen. Ask the rest of the students why they waived their right to read Wikipedia as free speech. Who cares why they wanted to read it or even whether they wanted to read it all, just ask them why they waived a right they knew they had. Make them think about it.
Then, if you've got enough time, ask yourself why you've been waiving so many rights in the name of The DMCA, The Patriot Act & The Patriot Act II. Why did you waive your rights in the name of national security and the comfort of huge corporations?
Go ahead, take your time.
If you're advocating blocking Wikipedia in a serious manner, please do explain how you're going to--at the same time--teach the students about the rights they have. It will entertain me, the excuses that fascists come up with always have.
"It's for your own good." just doesn't suffice, in my opinion. Who's determining what's "my own good" again? Oh, you want to. Right. It's called 'responsibility' and it comes with living so let the students have a helping of it.
As for the person asking the question, I don't know about you but I went to a high school where the first thing we were taught is that we are responsible for the information we present in a paper. The student is responsible for citing sources & verifying that the source is reliable. If you can't do that, you're going to end up reading The Onion with either hilarious or catastrophic results. This is a valuable life lesson, let the students learn it early when the consequence is a bad grade instead of a lawsuit. If you told the students Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, give them an F if they use one single reference from it. How can they argue with you, the instructor?
This is what I read:
"Blah blah blah politics. Bitch bitch bitch IBM did this so now we do it."
I read this hoping for some key points in distinguishing the functionality or benefits versus costs in using either format.
Nope.
The closest they get to that is "ODF is tightly tied to OOo." Oh, no! Not that! You know, that argument is null and void, right? Because these document formats are supposed to be open, like the names of both of them imply. Who cares if it's not yet integrated into your product, either format should allow that. It is, in fact, confusing to me why they don't let both formats exist and allow the government bodies to pick whatever the hell the want to store their data in. That's all this is, a political issue which is why it's filed in the politics section I guess.
If Microsoft truly believed their product to be superior to the alternative, they would sit back and let California make the mistake. Then, when everything falls apart, they could step in and save the day, while at the same time setting a precident for one format being better than the other. But, we all know that's not going to happen because I haven't heard Massachussetts hurting due to their choice. So, I guess Mr. Ballmer is going to have to set his fears aside & simply come to the harsh realization that another community developed format is just as good or better than their format. Heads up, ODF community, he just may fucking kill you.
And I certainly don't appreciate them demonizing IBM. "Big bad evil corporation launches national campaign to force their consumers into using something!" Pot calling the kettle black, in my opinion. If you could track the amount of money I have paid to a company--directly or indirectly--I would wager that I've paid IBM far less than Microsoft and I feel that IBM has done far more for me than Microsoft.
Shut up and let the consumer decide, Microsoft. Nothing's wrong with unbiased comparisons in helping them decide but you've got a conflict of interest here so I highly doubt anyone will swallow your tripe.
This sounds a lot like the same thing, we have one company roughly running some kind of monopoly on something we all kind of take for granted but I'm sure the government and government organizations like ICANN see some pretty big tax kickbacks from Verisign. If another player were to enter the market and *gasp* actually turn it into a competition market, then these taxes might be questioned, challenged & lost! And the consumer might end up spending $2 a year instead of $6! Personally, I think the major companies are the consumers and since I don't ever see myself owning more than one domain name unless I start a company, I don't care. First off, don't call it a 'ripoff' because that makes it sound like $6 would break you. And if you're earning minimum wage in America, that's probably not the case. Instead, press this to your elected officials as a monopoly. And when they put on the show and get all huffy, actually make sure they follow through with it! If they don't, write about it and keep bitching. I think the problem is that not a lot of people own a domain that they have to register, I'm sure the vast majority are owned by companies or businesses and that means less votes. So it's kind of a lost cause because the politicians know that this way A) earns their government money and B) doesn't matter to many voters. But if you could get the elderly to care about this, that would all be null & void because there is no voting power like the aging baby boomers
The telecommunications giant Comcast has severed its services to internet hogs who use more bandwidth than others. From the article, This is quite alarming to me, considering that I am forced into using a particular ISP based on some deal my neighborhood made many years before I moved here.
And, if I may elaborate, I feel I am a hog though I have never ever been threatened with this action before. What interests me is that they have my bandwidth capped and even that cap seems to fluctuate with how much my neighborhood is using. But, I'm pretty sure that the cable modem I have is physically capped at a low level because I've read stories of people uncapping them and being pretty much black listed. If that's what these "hogs" are doing, then I have little sympathy for them. The only time I had an uncapped connection was when I was in Bailey Hall at the University of Minnesota my freshman year. They had just installed ethernet and I soon discovered that they trusted me a little more than they should have. An unproductive dumbass freshman with a bass amp/speaker combo, a computer, a modded dreamcast and an uncapped connection to mIRC/morpheus/gnutella/etc made for some interesting nights
Back to the topic, though, I have often used BitTorrent while playing World of Warcraft and using Ventrillo with no problems. Me and my roommates pay for the highest upload/download rates but, as I've said before, we never get close to those numbers.
Here's a better question, how does your ISP handle telephone calls by unsatisfied customers who complain that in the middle of the day using a third party site, their bandwidth is pinched FAR BELOW what they've been paying for? In my case, as a current customer of Cox, I can speak from first hand experience that those calls go largely unnoticed--although I've had different results from different providers at different locations.
King Khazunga: You must be very very young my dear.
eldavojohn: Man.
King Khazunga: Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
eldavojohn: I'm 24.
King Khazunga: What?
eldavojohn: I'm 24. I'm not very very young.
King Khazunga: Well I can't just call you "my dear".
eldavojohn: Well you could say "eldavojohn".
King Khazunga: I didn't know you were called eldavojohn.
eldavojohn: Well you didn't bother to find out did you?
King Khazunga: I did say sorry about the "very very young my dear", but from behind you looked...
eldavojohn: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior.
King Khazunga: Well I am king.
eldavojohn: Oh, king eh? Very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.
So if the companies aren't playing by the law, fine the hell out of them. I only point out that this will probably come down to Apple sacrificing selection or release dates just to have a common price fixing scheme and the customer will get a better deal but suffer in quality of service. Should it really be up to a government commission to decide how Apple works this trade off? I honestly don't think it should be but that's just me. I think Apple had the option to work this one of two ways and now the government is making that decision for them.
It doesn't sit well with me, but I'm a fat stupid American so I guess I'm not in any place to comment.
Oh, the EU has fined so many companies for price fixing, I don't even know where to begin--Bayer & Chemtura, Siemens, Dow, escalator firms, Heineken, Aventis, animal feed companies, the Deutsche Post, many vitamin producers, Nintendo and, of course, the well known case of Microsoft.
...
I'm not saying that none of these fines are unjustified but I am saying that, if I may opine, the EU has been issuing a lot of fines. With this recent Apple one, it does seem as though Apple had no choice and if they aren't given an alternative to losing their contracts with record companies for the sake of running one Europe encompassing store, then I don't blame them. On the surface, the EU Commissions seem to be discouraging big businesses from selling things like XBoxes, PS3s or iTunes inside all of the countries. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I guess time will tell
It's long been known that Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, etc. contain a vast wealth of programming talent. Look at the rankings of the world wide programming contests. Unfortunately, with their dismal economies, these talents are often used for ill rather than good. I, myself, have two anecdotal stories of my friend's user accounts being hacked by unknown parties in the Ukraine. All in the name of 50 USD.
... however, that could just be my naïve American attitude again.
Why?
Surely, I reasoned, with the amount of time they took to set up that scam and avoid authorities, they could have gotten a job like I have and done something good for even more cash--but, that's my naïve American attitude for you. The job market probably doesn't exist there where they live.
Nothing would make me happier than to see these people given an opportunity to move somewhere close to make money, help their economy, establish an industry/infrastructure for future generations & to get these programmers off the street and into a job
On an offtopic note, I used to "cool" my computers in Minnesota by placing them next to the window during the winters, I'm certain you could cut down cooling costs in Siberia using similar strategies.
If you look over that, you'll see what specific software they did their trials with, the security issues, concerns about the SCO case, the scope of their trials & what recommendations they left.
However, the only section being discussed in the article is this one: Aside from that, the report has your basic run of the mill attitude of OSS being great financially & security wise but, oh, it would take so many resources to train everyone:
First let me say that the part where the researchers say "Get me the president!" isn't upon the first discovery of an impending disaster. It's usually after the data has been double checked & verified by other sources (if possible).
So, if your manager turns these reports over to upper management or shareholders & these have dire consequences upon how your department is viewed--then maybe it's not such a bad idea to double check the equipment or software.
Also, you're employed for a reason. If your manager ever handed over a faulty report, who's ass is on the line? Probably not yours. It's their ass that should get canned if they give faulty information. Now, if your ass was on the line and some outlying data came out in a report, would you constantly double check it?
And, has it ever been wrong before? If this is the twentieth time they've asked you to check it and it's never been wrong before, then maybe they're overdoing it. But if it's been faulty before, give them some credit for just trying to get to the bottom of things. Maybe this isn't the blame game, maybe this is just extreme caution. I don't get this kind of treatment where I work.
The sad part of it is that they're your manager & if they're blaming you, then they're probably saying that to the managers above them also. However, if I were upper management, I'd see through that and can your manager for their inability to take responsibility for those reporting to them.
As perverse as it may sound, I would also wager that there are individuals out there who would reply to these letters instantly and with a sense of pride for serving their country. I am very interested if the letters convey this attitude about this request for information. If they do, in fact, inform the individual that this is a matter of national security & that they will be bringing justice to the enemies of the United States, then I hope they are eventually published so we can all have a good laugh and that they might serve as a reminder for victims of future schemes.
Personally, I value breadth over depth. And I'm going to propose a reason why everyone should also: in the world of computer science, at any minute a once vital skill could be obsolete. Granted, it doesn't happen often (as we still need workers to maintain cobol & fortran code) but, instead of spending my free time hunched over Enterprise Java Bean projects learning their delicate intricacies, I find myself learning about Ruby, Spring, Hibernate, etc. Now, I might not be an expert in any of these fields but I may be glad when their time comes. All good things come to an end--and if EJBs were to be retired, I'd certainly like to know my way around these other frameworks & tools. I think the same can be said about fields of computer science. Be wary of the web developer that doesn't know the first thing about networks & server/client communication--that's often a pitfall for security.
So if you want my honest opinion about which "are hot or not," I think they're all pretty damn hot and I bleieve you can find money in any job where you make yourself usefull & valuable to a decent business. I find them all attractive because I enjoy setting up networks in my house and playing network administrater even though I don't do it at my job. I love networking Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. and I like toying around with different databases. I love to start new projects that rarely go anywhere but leave me with more understanding of how technologies or products work. I'm not a "trained expert" at any of them though, most importantly, I feel that I could easily become one if a situation deemed it necessary. If you don't enjoy doing some of these things--DON'T DO THEM. Who cares if they pay alot or are "hot"? I'd rather die happy & poor than rich & sad. Of course there is, it's the career you enjoy the most
Choose your path wisely.
- Steals SSL data using advanced Winsock2 functionality
- State-of-the-art, modularized trojan code
- Spread through IE browser exploits
- etc
...
When I read the Slashdot summary, I was initially concerned that I may be at risk. But then I noticed the above three lines and realized there was no risk since I don't use IE.But, in the end, if this is an exploit utilizing the very basic network DLL that windows provides for socket connections (Winsock2--which is what I assume all network applications eventually link against in Windows) then why aren't other browsers at risk?
I know Firefox is awesome & more secure & all that jazz but I haven't done enough network programming to know the nitty gritty details of it. Does anyone know why, if this trojan is exploiting the basic socket connection library that the Windows API provides, all browsers aren't potential victims?
I mean, it makes sense to introduce some sort of security that never ever lets anything but the browser's code access the interfaces to these libraries
You choose to go with a multi-threaded application when it is necessary. Anyone who just starts adding threads because they feel they need to utilize the number of cores is a complete idiot in my book. Hell, why don't we just put spin locks in there so your CPU usage shoots up and it looks like I'm using it to its full potential?
My point is that there have been a few applications I've written that require a multi-threaded solution. Perhaps this API would have made my life easier but I doubt it as I had to pretty much structure by hand each thread. There are frameworks, graphical libraries and that also use multi-threading that the scheduler has taken care of in the past. Hurray for multi-core if you use those.
A good programmer keeps things as simple as possible. They will be easier to maintain in the future. I'm afraid that this is unneeded layer of abstraction or some nut case trying to "utilize cores" for the sake of it. No one has only one application running at one time. The OS is usually running, you have a network process, etc. If I write my application to use one core, I'm giving the user more options to do with the other cores whatever he wants. Let the scheduler work with the futuristic hardware and sort that crap out.
Also, not everyone is multi-core already. Take use into consideration please!
What remains to be seen is where the one starts and the other begins.
You might be able to prove to me that great apes & monkeys have this sense of "humanity" or--for lack of a better term--"monkey-anity." Like the basic tenants of it where you don't kill babies or you starve yourself if it saves someone like you.
But I'm going to find it hard to believe that monkeys have an advanced sense of specific morals like you should or shouldn't file share because it helps or hurts the artists.
I haven't read both these books and I've only briefly read the article but I would find it interesting to understand how our morality evolved or how localized concepts came about. I guess it also has implications connecting us to animals which I don't have a problem with because I don't eat or kill these animals. This news might anger some people but don't tell me that you've never seen a good dog adhere to morals that seemed to be ingrained in them.
I'd like to see this area explored but I think the biggest issue is that morals are often anecdotal or localized making them hard to quantify or generalize. It's the same way with the human race, so don't be so surprised. More power to these researchers even if all they are doing is documenting cases of basic morals in animals.
Let me break it down for you: the Mayans had a very advanced & complex calendar that took into account a lot of different cycles and even some of the most extraordinary hiccups that come with man's attempt at keeping track of time. For the Gregorian calendar, we have leap years except we skip one every four hundred years and even with that in place I think we lose a day every 8,000 years. And you will find that every model has some special issues.
So, back to the Mayans, their measurements of days came in sets of 13, contrary to our sets of 7 days in a week. So the world is no more likely to end on 13.0.0.0.0 than it was on the new years even in year seven. Just because 13 was always the last number in their cycles just means that we start a new cycle. No cataclysmic event needed to mark it. The cycle simply repeats and they most likely go to 1.0.0.0.0 there's no such thing as overflow in their calendar.
Fun hokey astrological implications? Yes. Cold hard scientific data pointing to the end of the world? No.
But the article doesn't analyze the manufacturing lines of the Hummer nor the rest of the materials of the Prius. If you want to establish facts, do comprehensive research before you publish an article. The author sounds less concerned with establishing facts and holding people accountable than just firing off quotes that cause people to raise their eyebrows. I read this article and he raises some interesting points but doesn't back them up with hard facts & numbers other than what he read in the CNW report.
Curiously, the article doesn't mention any specific problems. I'm racking my tiny brain right now to think of some problem that isn't desired by the RIAA.
I submit to you the anecdotal evidence of my sister's "iPod." She purchased songs through iTMS and attempted to move the DRM'd files onto her SanDisk MP3 Player. Then she wondered why it didn't work. It didn't work because the files have digital rights management & only brand specific players will play it--and vice versa.
You know, right now iPods are probably the most popular portable music device. But I don't know of any other music download DRM services that they work with. So if some third party download service called Musicload is reporting that 75% of problem calls are DRM related, I'm going to wager that every single call went a little something like "Do you have an iPod?" "No." "I'm sorry, iPod doesn't support our DRM." (or the German equivalent). In fact, on their site, I don't see an iPod as being supported.
I think a DRM standard that everyone adopts would avoid these issues but I don't forsee that happening in the future. It benefits Apple somewhat because they can have a great service or a great player and reap the market. I don't blame them, however, because they do a fine job on both ends. I am concerned about any sort of free market existing here.
In the end, the RIAA wants these problems. They don't want you docking a player with many computers and soaking up the files. They want one player associated with one computer associated with one account and any attempt to anything else should wipe everything off the face of the planet. Why? Money. Somehow the consumer no longer has a voice.
I donate $120 to The Current yearly, if we're talking a couple cents a song, I'm not extremely worried that they can't pay that but I still think that public radio should be able to avoid this. I've learned about so many good bands via that channel! For the sake of all musicians I haven't heard yet, I hope internet NPR doesn't die because of this.
Someone happened to murder my husband in a similar fashion (he was a very detestable man, everyone hated him and as a result I suffered at home). There's your shadow of a doubt.
But, oddly enough, I've seen what the courts allow the RIAA & MPAA to submit as evidence (server logs with IP addresses) to prosecute people and, at least in those cases, that's all the evidence they need! Considering this, am I shocked that a legally requisitioned computer can be submitted & used as evidence? Not really--though I should be. It's a shame what the "Justice System" is becoming these days.
I guess I could stretch this and look for people who search for "to build a fire" and charge them with all unsolved arsons in their area. Boy scouts & Jack London fans beware!
I am severely impressed with Illinois' capability of assessing a situation so quickly & flawlessly. They already claim an annual cost savings of U.S. $2.1 million [proprietarily locked DOC warning] for five years ($10.5 million total) by using Microsoft's technologies! Why am I impressed? Well, they didn't even have to try anything else out to discover this! If they did, this case study doesn't show any of it. That document (if you read it) only makes claims but backs it up with nothing. I laugh at the very idea of it being titled a "Case Study."
You know, where I work, if you make a statement like "would save our company $10 million" you kind of need to make a business case. A large part of the business case is having micro experiments & demonstrations & data to present to back up your business case. In fact, it's a lot like the scientific process where you present facts that prove your argument. Granted, it's not required to be that rigorous but you usually have to get those to agree with you through this.
If I were a tax paying Illini and that document was the only thing persuading me that my government should use Microsoft products, I would bitch. That's just me, though. I think precisely what this Joseph Campbell needs to do is a "science project" as he calls it. For some reason they're avoiding a "business science project" and I'm really questioning his motivation for circumventing that.
If he's trying to clear his name, he's doing a bad job of it.
I found an article by him in which I hoped to hear his logic and reasoning against global warming.
He claims it is just a natural cycle. That he's seen two of these in his career and he'll see one more before he dies. If his "death threat" was someone saying that he won't see temperature returning to normal before he dies, I don't think it was a death threat.
I can't find a formal report of his research but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If this is his argument, he leaves out a lot of things that need to be explained to me before I let it go. Like, why are polar bears suddenly on the endangered species list? What's happening to all the snow on the tops of mountains? Where are the ice glaciers (with ice that has been around for thousands if not millions of years) going? What is his retort to the CO2 levels being their highest ever--even after looking at ice core samples?
His article only mentions a professor from MIT but not what his criticisms are.
If their work is being derided, I want to know what their work is. I'm a skeptic also, if these people are being published in newspapers, you would think that they wouldn't waste their time on death threats and counter-counter-criticisms but would instead try to get the truths they have been finding in their research out to the public. If you're conducting good science that, in and of itself, will clear your name in the end.
The more I search for information on Timothy Ball, the more he seems like he's playing just as dirty as the people he's fighting. Check out his lawsuit for a journal publishing a letter. I feel we're not hearing the full story here.
When I'm at work and I enter situations in which someone is decrying someone else and vice versa, I just present everyone with facts. If I had done research and I received death threats, I would submit to major newspapers two things: my research published with permission to reprint it & the death threats in their original form. Nothing could boost my efforts to get the truth out there more. The fact that I see a PhD and scientist spending more time saying his life is in danger than presenting me with his findings tells me a lot about what his motives are.
He was published, I guess in Ecological Complexity which I do not have access to. If anyone has papers from his work, I would love to see it--otherwise I'm going to tune this soap opera out as emotional noise in what should be a stoic process.
Question everything. Question both sides. And if you have something that is true, present it. I'm not calling him a liar, I just can't call him anything right now because all I can find are stories about who called who what.
Other option is just Vista & the new Office. Where at some point you just have to install the new Office (I don't think old & new can be installed at the same time) and make them use it. Now, while I'm sure Vista is more similar to XP than Linux and the Office applications are probably similar also, you know there's going to be bumps.
That said, I don't think the transition to Google Apps on Linux would be any more painful than the transition to Vista running Office. I suppose time will tell though. Hopefully my assumptions are correct and this sparks interest on this huge cost savings?
I guess if you really wanted to promote Linux, you would write tutorials on how to take advantage of this switch to Vista/Office and how to put your workers on Linux/Google Apps. When you make cheap and extremely convenient, they will come.