Visually Google ads are indeed a lot better than most others. But then again why should I not block them if I'm not interested in them?
Now to the privacy issue. Google may not (yet) be able to associate an identity with most people using their search engine. But them boasting about "millions of variables" of their users means they collect any piece of data they can get. So it is only logical I only give them the data I want them to know (which happens to be nothing at all). That's a fundamental principle of privacy and a good idea (as opposed to tinfoil weirdness).
You basically seem to have the opposite approach: Why not give anyone any information about me until they do anything bad with this data? Answer is simple: You couldn't stop it. You wouldn't even know who has what information about you. If a company can set cookies on half of the pages you visit, linking "millions of variables" to an email address is just a matter of time and cooperations with other companies.
In the last 15 years I have seen literally millions of ads on web pages and not a single one of them has interested me enough to click on it. I would say chances are slim they will in the future.
And why is giving your name and credit card number "good for privacy nuts"?
Seriously, if Google really tries, they could mine more information about you than even your closest friends know. Just a thought. If your girl-friend gets pregnant and Google offers you ads for abortion clinics and baby clothes you may think they know stuff they shouldn't.
> And now, the same people are screaming about privacy rights
I am not "the same people". I never said I would accept moderately intrusive ads. I don't want them, period. If that means I have to pay something for a search engine that does not collect data about me and annoys me with ads that's ok with me (not necessarily others).
I'm not justifying what I do. And you, feel free to watch ads as much as you like. I for one do not like them. They distract me. If I am interested in buying something I actively look for information on that product. For example good tinfoil;-).
In a fraction of a second, it can evaluate millions of variables about its users and advertisers, correlate them with its potential database of billions of ads and deliver the message to which each user is most likely to respond.
Evaluate this! I blacklist googlesyndication flat out, reject cookies from google and forge my referrer and user-agent. Google has nothing of interest to me, except search results.
Did you ever write a program with special care for accessibility (shortcuts, hints for screenreaders and braille terminals)? I did and I can assure you very few employers pay you to do so. You're right, a blind persons' first concern is (and should be) whether the software is usable for them. But OSS is exactly the key to ensure this in the long run.
Invest millions of $$ in the development of accessible software.
???
Profit!
That's not gonna fly and Microsoft knows it. Take a look at Windows and ie. Much better than it was 5 years ago, true, but a console and lynx was the far better choice for blind people then and it is still today.
> after blind and other visually impaired state workers raised concerns.
And what concerns would that be?
My 2 cents: The less of these thousands of documents are stored in a proprietary format the better for everybody, including visually impaired. What am I missing?
1. It has a need for package management. To me, this is a fundamental flaw with the design of the operating system. There are other techniques and ideas to handle how software is installed.
Like distributing every piece of Software with one of many installer programs? These installers require administrator priviledges and I am supposed to trust them not to screw with dependancies and the registry. This is by far the worst system I could think of.
2. It requires user input for installing a simple desktop system. It should as simple as boot from CD, click install, walk away cause it will reboot and ask you to create an account when done.
Knoppix comes very close to this scenario. (Windows XP does not.)
3. The formal seperation of System and applications is not very good, see OS X for an example of how to do this properly.
I don't know OS X but to me the separation of system and applications makes perfect sense. Think multiuser. It allows unpriviledged users to install and use applications without compromising system stability.
4. It emulates Windows UI design and does it poorly. Configuration requires more knowledge than a traditional user has.
Wrong. KDE is a descendant of CDE which does not have much in common with Windows. And what configuration are you talking about? Scanners (default flamebait)?
5. For "simple things, like Windows, it treats the User like a moron and does a poor job at it. It shouldn't be "easy" if and only if you find the proper wizard to do it and click the buttons in the right order, it should just work.
Some things just aren't simple. Like setting database permissions or configuring a http proxy or a SMTP server. I don't think wizards would do any good here. Still, you need to configure them somehow.
6. Any and all error codes should be written colloquial english. They should only notify the user if the User has a good reson to know the error happened.
I disagree strongly. I want my error codes colloquial German and I absolutely want at least the possibility to enable as many error codes as I can get. I don't want my applications to silently behave differently from what I expect (as opposed to differently to what the application guesses what I expect).
7. Developing tools for Linux need more work and should encourage developers not use package management as a way to install applications.
See above. Package management is the best way to do installations. It is far superior to Setup.exe for a variety of simple reasons.
8. Linux developers should focus on creating tools, not emulating tools already created. The cooperation of professional graphics artists and UI designers would be extremely helpful. Make whitepapers of the UI before designing the application. You'd be surprised how much it will improve the outcome.
OSS development teams do what they like to do and that's a good thing. There is no use trying to tell them they should proffessionalize.
8. Most people don't use Office at home, stop using that as an excuse.
Where did you get this surprising information from? I can only speak for myself and a few friends but all of them use a word processor on a regular basis at home and all of them chose OpenOffice.
I real life you are more than a name. Others can identify you by your face, figure, gestures, voice etc. Your name is merely redundant.
In MMORPGs, at least in those online today, most of these attributes that help identify you are missing. In some RPGs you can color your clothes/armor. In WoW you farm the armor that has the best stats and in comes in exactly one color and look. In some RPGs you can choose a body size and attributes like thickness of arms and legs or features of your avatar's face. In WoW you have only the choice between a few hairdos and faces and you need to be real close to recognize them.
So what you are in WoW is indeed basically your name, especially because interaction with other players is mostly via chat. I must admit I would consider CmdrTaco an ooc name in WoW. BTW I canceled my account today because I lost interest in WoW and I am really angry about Blizzard's recend introduction of spyware in the game client.
Installing an OS is something the majority of users (as opposed to./ audience) does not even consider, except when the pre-installed OS got corrupted. So linux installers better be foolproof in order to bring linux on the desktops. (And please provide an expert mode for the savvy.)
Uh, and [i]most[/i] distros' installations sucked quite a bit back in 2000 as far as I remember. There were even distros that required you to know the chipset of your video card, horizontal and vertical timings of your monitor and the protocol of your mouse.
You need abstraction and fantasy do model a real-life problem in a computer language. And you must not be within the problem but outside looking onto it. Same applies to social roles. First step is to be able to take a look from the outside on your role (abstraction), second is to image how it would be to play a different role (fantasy).
I find the correlation pretty darn obvious.
What the article does not tell is the kind of spectrum these quantum dots produce. Chances are most people will not feel comfortable living or working with this kind of light. Any info on this yet?
Easy. Just import cats to kill the rats, then import dogs to take care of the cats, then disembowelingly challenged velociraptors to take out the dogs and you're done! After cleaning the islands of the raptors, of course. Sounds like a smart idea, eh?
From reading the first few lines of the article, I already suspected they would lose track of the rodent.
Let me guess, the rat was a pregnant female and her offspring will extinct tons of local species. Usually happens when zoologists try that kind of stuff without expecting the unexpected.
I only hope the new document format makes it easier for them (and third-party application) to convert an OOo document into readable HTML with style sheets. Whenever I write a documentation that is among others to be published on the web I am tempted to write it in OOo because I like it. I still end up writing it in HTML myself because I don't like OOo's HTML output.
Well, since history every generation complained about the stupidity of the next generation. But there is some truth to it. With science, culture and power structures becoming more and more complex only few can derive some common sense that reflects those changes. This is supplemented by the fact that a good education relies heavily on the parent's wealth in many countries (especially USA and Germany) making it more difficult for most to get a clue about how things work. Some escape with alcohol, telenovelas or MMORPGs which make things temporarily easy for them.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Yes, there are many, many stupid people out there and whole branches of trade (if not all) concentrate on them, especially online advertisers.
Slashdot Mirror
Now to the privacy issue. Google may not (yet) be able to associate an identity with most people using their search engine. But them boasting about "millions of variables" of their users means they collect any piece of data they can get. So it is only logical I only give them the data I want them to know (which happens to be nothing at all). That's a fundamental principle of privacy and a good idea (as opposed to tinfoil weirdness).
You basically seem to have the opposite approach: Why not give anyone any information about me until they do anything bad with this data? Answer is simple: You couldn't stop it. You wouldn't even know who has what information about you. If a company can set cookies on half of the pages you visit, linking "millions of variables" to an email address is just a matter of time and cooperations with other companies.
In the last 15 years I have seen literally millions of ads on web pages and not a single one of them has interested me enough to click on it. I would say chances are slim they will in the future.
Seriously, if Google really tries, they could mine more information about you than even your closest friends know. Just a thought. If your girl-friend gets pregnant and Google offers you ads for abortion clinics and baby clothes you may think they know stuff they shouldn't.
I'm not justifying what I do. And you, feel free to watch ads as much as you like. I for one do not like them. They distract me. If I am interested in buying something I actively look for information on that product. For example good tinfoil ;-).
Simply not true.
e.g. Jawz can read OpenOffice documents perfectly.
That's not gonna fly and Microsoft knows it. Take a look at Windows and ie. Much better than it was 5 years ago, true, but a console and lynx was the far better choice for blind people then and it is still today.
My 2 cents: The less of these thousands of documents are stored in a proprietary format the better for everybody, including visually impaired. What am I missing?
Maybe they took the traffic for a DDoS and shut down.
Just a guess.
As your posting clearly shows even the fact that the disks were not used is an information worth keeping secret.
I Couldn't care less.
In MMORPGs, at least in those online today, most of these attributes that help identify you are missing. In some RPGs you can color your clothes/armor. In WoW you farm the armor that has the best stats and in comes in exactly one color and look. In some RPGs you can choose a body size and attributes like thickness of arms and legs or features of your avatar's face. In WoW you have only the choice between a few hairdos and faces and you need to be real close to recognize them.
So what you are in WoW is indeed basically your name, especially because interaction with other players is mostly via chat. I must admit I would consider CmdrTaco an ooc name in WoW. BTW I canceled my account today because I lost interest in WoW and I am really angry about Blizzard's recend introduction of spyware in the game client.
Why would you need one single volume for 25 TB of pr0n?
Or is there anything else that eats up these amounts of space?
Uh, and [i]most[/i] distros' installations sucked quite a bit back in 2000 as far as I remember. There were even distros that required you to know the chipset of your video card, horizontal and vertical timings of your monitor and the protocol of your mouse.
You need abstraction and fantasy do model a real-life problem in a computer language. And you must not be within the problem but outside looking onto it. Same applies to social roles. First step is to be able to take a look from the outside on your role (abstraction), second is to image how it would be to play a different role (fantasy). I find the correlation pretty darn obvious.
... uh no, forget about that.
Serves him right! I bet he forgot his tinfoil hat again.
What the article does not tell is the kind of spectrum these quantum dots produce. Chances are most people will not feel comfortable living or working with this kind of light. Any info on this yet?
AFAIK this is roughly what they tried down under.
Let me guess, the rat was a pregnant female and her offspring will extinct tons of local species. Usually happens when zoologists try that kind of stuff without expecting the unexpected.
In soviet russia XML patents you.
I only hope the new document format makes it easier for them (and third-party application) to convert an OOo document into readable HTML with style sheets. Whenever I write a documentation that is among others to be published on the web I am tempted to write it in OOo because I like it. I still end up writing it in HTML myself because I don't like OOo's HTML output.
Well, since history every generation complained about the stupidity of the next generation. But there is some truth to it. With science, culture and power structures becoming more and more complex only few can derive some common sense that reflects those changes. This is supplemented by the fact that a good education relies heavily on the parent's wealth in many countries (especially USA and Germany) making it more difficult for most to get a clue about how things work. Some escape with alcohol, telenovelas or MMORPGs which make things temporarily easy for them.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Yes, there are many, many stupid people out there and whole branches of trade (if not all) concentrate on them, especially online advertisers.