Why would that be? I work at a major university as a researcher. Their automated resume system parses.doc documents. There is no particular reason to rip out the system and put in a newer one simply to support a new file format that doesn't actually gain them anything.
Actually, a lot of places have automated submission systems that are built around.doc and have not bothered to rewrite them since.doc is very common and.docx doesn't really add anything the system would care about... thus it would be a 'too look more hip' type update.
Meh, just look at slashdot or any other geek culture.. particular groups within it shame and humiliate people for failing to use what everyone else uses. You see it with iPhones and 'droids, OSX and Windows and Linux, Scotch and Wine and Beer,.. humans are social animals that like to push people for conformity around whatever the group uses to differentiate it from other groups. The symbols themselves are irrelevant and arbitrary.
While one might be tempted to blame some specific group like 'hipsters', it is a pretty pervasive behavior that pretty much every subculture is guilty of.
Eh, there is a constant back and forth between people who like devices that do one thing well or devices that do lots of things 'ok'. Some people prefer devices that cram as many features as possible into a single package but are not really built for any of them, other people would rather have multiple devices with each doing it's job well.
Which were only able to integrate with themselves and the narrow set of things they set it up for... quickly leading to 'well, we are running X, and it supports B and C, but you are using A which only works with Y and Z'..
One would be far more effective in pointing out other people's lack of perspective if they were not caught in their own little box. There is more to 'work' then spreadsheets and programming, and tablets can be useful too.
Unless you want to go really high end, in which case you loop back ground to OSS.. at which point Oracle is for 'toy' databases with only a 'few hundred terabyes'.
It all depends on your use case. We just migrated off Oracle because it suited our situation poorly. Oddly enough, excessive downtime was one of the reasons we switched off ^_^
Well, in Florida you are allowed to use deadly force against a person if you feel threatened and are in a place you have a right to be. Unfortunately both people in this case can make that claim since they were both allowed to be where they were...
That is kinda my point. I can see what they do, but I have also seen some pretty shady sites over the years and they look/sound very similar, so someone who is not already familiar with them could plausibly confuse them with the other type.
I think people here are getting way too hung up on the assumption that this is some kind of systematic attempt on free knowledge pushed by shady groups... I know it fits in with the slashdot narrative, but the people who sent out the notice are probably just low range bureaucrats making 30k/year who are not up to date on the latest 'in' technologies that we geeks and nerd are.. so they looked at the site, found similarities between it and less reputable ones, felt it trigged an anti-fraud law, and notified the place. Then instead of clearing up the confusion they decided to be smartasses with their EULA, resulting in the Internet getting riled up over what is probably just some poor person sitting in a desk somewhere trying to do their job and keep an eye on things that are honestly not good, and made a mistake.
Context and appearance matters. Yes you can call yourself a doctor or an engineer, you can have a PhD or an engineering degree, but if you appear to be associating yourself with the legal/regulated version of the usage that kicks in restrictions. I can call myself an engineer in a limited context because I have a degree in engineering... but if I appeared to be giving the impression that I was equivalent to a certified "E"ngineer, I could get in trouble.
Heh, well, I am sure if any of those people openned up an online clinic giving out medical advice, that would raise some legal eyebrows...
*nods* which is why I suspect the whole matter could be cleared up with a phonecall or two. This really strikes me as a default ruling based off surface information and no clarification from the company.
That was my thought... we have a perfectly good tool for dealing with illegal activity, fines for both the perpetrator and their carrier.
I suspect however that the rather neutered FTC (always though it was odd that the FTC can be so powerful when it comes to content, but so weak when it comes to regulation... oh well, gotta protect us from boobies because they are immoral but anti-consumer behavior is too profitable to be unethical...) might simply not have the power to do such a thing.
Looking through their site, while they never claim to be accredited, they strongly imply they are equivalent, including throwing around 'university' quite a bit.. though very carefully never actually calling themselves one. To people familiar with the venture this probably seems fine, but to someone just glancing over it, it looks pretty shady, like the layed things out so it was just technically within the law but gives the consumer an impression it is more then it is.
However, since it is free, I am not sure how it all ties together. I suspect regulators looked over the site and said 'this looks fishy', and this could be cleared up with a couple of phone calls.
I suspect if they actually sat down with the state things would be fine, but for the moment they throw around the word 'university' and that has accreditation implications. It is a bit like going to someone who claims to be a doctor who will do exams, but then points out that they can not actually write referrals or prescribe meds because they are not a doctor, thus they shouldn't need a license to practice. It could probably be sorted out with the state pretty easily but, by default, if it walks like a goose but talks like a duck, anti-fraud regulation will probably treat it like a duck unless it shows it isn't one.
I actually suspect it is an accreditation issue or a consumer protection one. Secondary education institutions generally go through a process to show that they are not diploma mills preying on people, and some states are better then others at cracking down on the practice. Since they invoke the word 'university' (which, like doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc, is not something you can just call yourself in an official capacity) they probably trigged a consumer protection law.
Ahm.. I hate to break it to you, but those 'cycles' were not rapid and shallow, they were devastating. They were not even cycles really, they were just plain instability with a massive impact on people near the bottom. The reason they tend to get portrayed as 'shallow' is because those accounts tend to have been written by people on the upper end who were generally not effected much.
Well, it would give them something to do ^_^. I was mostly thinking of them as an example of a game with an active economy, since in many ways bitcoin could be considered little more then a game.
Yes, judges have halted class action lawsuits due to an arbitration clause. It went all the way to SCOTUS and they ruled that such clauses are legally binding.
Unfortunately the reason they can do it is because the original agreement included a clause saying they could do it, so by using their service you have agreed to allow them to unilaterally change whatever and whenever they want. The original agreement did not include an ability for you to do, so no. And since it is 'signed' on a read-only web page it is not possible to alter it and send it back.
Yeah.. banks could never get away with the shady stuff Paypal does, and that gives Paypal a HUGE advantage in the marketplace. And that is saying a lot given the shady things banks CAN get away with... but the legal framework Paypal exists in just wouldn't hold water with banks.. after all, your bank account holds YOUR money. Your Paypal account does not.
Paypal does not need to 'compete'. They have a lock and integration into sites like EBay and Etsy. Alternate payment methods can be as sophisticated as you like, but unless you can convince their 'partners' to drop them (unlikely) then it will probably not take off.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would that be? I work at a major university as a researcher. Their automated resume system parses .doc documents. There is no particular reason to rip out the system and put in a newer one simply to support a new file format that doesn't actually gain them anything.
Actually, a lot of places have automated submission systems that are built around .doc and have not bothered to rewrite them since .doc is very common and .docx doesn't really add anything the system would care about... thus it would be a 'too look more hip' type update.
Meh, just look at slashdot or any other geek culture.. particular groups within it shame and humiliate people for failing to use what everyone else uses. You see it with iPhones and 'droids, OSX and Windows and Linux, Scotch and Wine and Beer,.. humans are social animals that like to push people for conformity around whatever the group uses to differentiate it from other groups. The symbols themselves are irrelevant and arbitrary.
While one might be tempted to blame some specific group like 'hipsters', it is a pretty pervasive behavior that pretty much every subculture is guilty of.
Eh, there is a constant back and forth between people who like devices that do one thing well or devices that do lots of things 'ok'. Some people prefer devices that cram as many features as possible into a single package but are not really built for any of them, other people would rather have multiple devices with each doing it's job well.
Spamming is too profitable, and thus going after it would 'hurt the economy'.
Which were only able to integrate with themselves and the narrow set of things they set it up for... quickly leading to 'well, we are running X, and it supports B and C, but you are using A which only works with Y and Z'..
One would be far more effective in pointing out other people's lack of perspective if they were not caught in their own little box. There is more to 'work' then spreadsheets and programming, and tablets can be useful too.
I would not say 'stagnent', but not moving at anywhere near the speed movies said they would. But in each of those fields I see slow steady progress.
Unless you want to go really high end, in which case you loop back ground to OSS.. at which point Oracle is for 'toy' databases with only a 'few hundred terabyes'.
It all depends on your use case. We just migrated off Oracle because it suited our situation poorly. Oddly enough, excessive downtime was one of the reasons we switched off ^_^
Well, in Florida you are allowed to use deadly force against a person if you feel threatened and are in a place you have a right to be. Unfortunately both people in this case can make that claim since they were both allowed to be where they were...
Good plan.. good plan....
That is kinda my point. I can see what they do, but I have also seen some pretty shady sites over the years and they look/sound very similar, so someone who is not already familiar with them could plausibly confuse them with the other type.
I think people here are getting way too hung up on the assumption that this is some kind of systematic attempt on free knowledge pushed by shady groups... I know it fits in with the slashdot narrative, but the people who sent out the notice are probably just low range bureaucrats making 30k/year who are not up to date on the latest 'in' technologies that we geeks and nerd are.. so they looked at the site, found similarities between it and less reputable ones, felt it trigged an anti-fraud law, and notified the place. Then instead of clearing up the confusion they decided to be smartasses with their EULA, resulting in the Internet getting riled up over what is probably just some poor person sitting in a desk somewhere trying to do their job and keep an eye on things that are honestly not good, and made a mistake.
Context and appearance matters. Yes you can call yourself a doctor or an engineer, you can have a PhD or an engineering degree, but if you appear to be associating yourself with the legal/regulated version of the usage that kicks in restrictions. I can call myself an engineer in a limited context because I have a degree in engineering... but if I appeared to be giving the impression that I was equivalent to a certified "E"ngineer, I could get in trouble.
Heh, well, I am sure if any of those people openned up an online clinic giving out medical advice, that would raise some legal eyebrows...
*nods* which is why I suspect the whole matter could be cleared up with a phonecall or two. This really strikes me as a default ruling based off surface information and no clarification from the company.
That was my thought... we have a perfectly good tool for dealing with illegal activity, fines for both the perpetrator and their carrier.
I suspect however that the rather neutered FTC (always though it was odd that the FTC can be so powerful when it comes to content, but so weak when it comes to regulation... oh well, gotta protect us from boobies because they are immoral but anti-consumer behavior is too profitable to be unethical...) might simply not have the power to do such a thing.
Looking through their site, while they never claim to be accredited, they strongly imply they are equivalent, including throwing around 'university' quite a bit.. though very carefully never actually calling themselves one. To people familiar with the venture this probably seems fine, but to someone just glancing over it, it looks pretty shady, like the layed things out so it was just technically within the law but gives the consumer an impression it is more then it is.
However, since it is free, I am not sure how it all ties together. I suspect regulators looked over the site and said 'this looks fishy', and this could be cleared up with a couple of phone calls.
I suspect if they actually sat down with the state things would be fine, but for the moment they throw around the word 'university' and that has accreditation implications. It is a bit like going to someone who claims to be a doctor who will do exams, but then points out that they can not actually write referrals or prescribe meds because they are not a doctor, thus they shouldn't need a license to practice. It could probably be sorted out with the state pretty easily but, by default, if it walks like a goose but talks like a duck, anti-fraud regulation will probably treat it like a duck unless it shows it isn't one.
I actually suspect it is an accreditation issue or a consumer protection one. Secondary education institutions generally go through a process to show that they are not diploma mills preying on people, and some states are better then others at cracking down on the practice. Since they invoke the word 'university' (which, like doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc, is not something you can just call yourself in an official capacity) they probably trigged a consumer protection law.
Ahm.. I hate to break it to you, but those 'cycles' were not rapid and shallow, they were devastating. They were not even cycles really, they were just plain instability with a massive impact on people near the bottom. The reason they tend to get portrayed as 'shallow' is because those accounts tend to have been written by people on the upper end who were generally not effected much.
Well, it would give them something to do ^_^. I was mostly thinking of them as an example of a game with an active economy, since in many ways bitcoin could be considered little more then a game.
Yes, judges have halted class action lawsuits due to an arbitration clause. It went all the way to SCOTUS and they ruled that such clauses are legally binding.
Unfortunately the reason they can do it is because the original agreement included a clause saying they could do it, so by using their service you have agreed to allow them to unilaterally change whatever and whenever they want. The original agreement did not include an ability for you to do, so no. And since it is 'signed' on a read-only web page it is not possible to alter it and send it back.
Yeah.. banks could never get away with the shady stuff Paypal does, and that gives Paypal a HUGE advantage in the marketplace. And that is saying a lot given the shady things banks CAN get away with... but the legal framework Paypal exists in just wouldn't hold water with banks.. after all, your bank account holds YOUR money. Your Paypal account does not.
Paypal does not need to 'compete'. They have a lock and integration into sites like EBay and Etsy. Alternate payment methods can be as sophisticated as you like, but unless you can convince their 'partners' to drop them (unlikely) then it will probably not take off.