Greek philosophers have proven that Americans actually pay infinate tax on prizes. You get money, you get a tax bill for that money, you get sent more money to cover the taxes, get a tax bill for that, get sent more money to cover the tax....
1: Unless you're planning to buy an awful lot of laptops, these people are crucial
2: yes they'll buy it elsewhere. On ebay or reseller sites for $100 less. If people can get something cheap, they will
3: The receipient is free to do whatever they want with the laptop. People do and will bid on the auctions though. Scalpers have been thriving since before Ebay was even invented and it's only got worse since then.
4: not for a charity. If you're not making product on a product and a rival can make a superior product for not much more and you can't match them technologically, you don't have many options of improving sales.
5: Why do you think charities do these "just $5 a month can feed a family for a lifetime" over calls for one off donations now? because people don't like seeing a huge chunk taken out of their bank account. Now maybe if they did do a similar thing to these charities that advertise on TV they'd have more success but it seems they're looking at making people pay a big chunk of change in one go. I don't know anyone who would be happy giving $100 away to someone they don't know.
6 and 7: because these donations aren't sustainable, they're relying on big payments from organisations and it will be increasingly difficult to find organisations willing to fund the project as I imagine that most will only contribute a single time to the project.
I've had an interview, was nervous but relieved when I got the job. Then shortly after saying I had the positions he said "you were the worst interviewee I've had in a long time, I almost didn't give you the job". I was completely crushed by that, especially considering it was a pretty crappy job (night filler at tescos) and it made me feel down for a long long time. It was just such a nasty thing to say to someone whether it was true or not (I'm extremely shy and introverted and that kinda thing does nothing for my confidence).
First of all: Tell people they haven't got the job, in a letter preferably. Nothing worse then not knowing. If you have critisism, disguise it and make it in regards to other candidates (the successfull applicant showed a much stronger knowledge of xyz). Chances are they know their skill shortcomings but occasionally they won't and you have to be sure that you don't critisize something so heavily it destroys them.
You seem to be completely missing his point. People won't care about the charity side of things and buy it wherever it's cheaper. Ultimately most people would rather save $100+ then donate $100+ to a charity. For 99% of people $100 is a huge single donation and simply something they wouldn't consider.
You cannot buy this product elsewhere without a huge markup, that's the underlying flaw of the project. For people who may be struggling to feed their families and where university grads can expect just $40 a month, $200 is just too hard to turn down. Even worse, I suspect lots would find $50 hard to turn down which is where this project falls down.
That's not even considering the competitor option (this argument is only vaguely related). Intel's Eduwise laptop is $400 and packs a 900mhz celeron M compared to the 350mhz geode in the OLPC. If They're going to charge $350 for this and for $50 you can get a system that's a whole generation more powerfull and will still no doubt run Linux.
The OLPC people don't seem to have researched just how many people would feel comfortable essentially giving away $100-$200 to charity. There's been lots of buzz from linux enthusiasts and homebrew types but how many parents in the West have they talked to in regards to pricing? This thing needs to sell in the high 100,000's in the west for the project to be successfull and so far all I've seen them talk about is the charity side. They need to really look at the viability of the western side of things from a business perspective and I don't think they are.
That's not exactly something you could do at a counter, you'd need to spend a significant amount of time with the card. You'd have to steal the card which would make the whole hacking the chip think rather redundant.
there are multiple reasons why this exercise is meaningless:
1: they cannot authorise the transaction using this method so the customer wouldn't be able to pay for what they intended to buy. The second a chip and pin card reader is opened and modification is attempted, it bricks itself. This would mean it's impossible to modify the internals and still enable the reader to contact a bank. Shops would notice pretty fast if lots of people were stealing goods and getting someone to swipe the card in two different readers (one fake, one real) would quickly get you reported.
2: it is impossible to clone a chip using a reader. The chip only accepts certain encrypted commands and responds differently each time to these commands in a way only the bank is able to decrypt. It's not possible to dump these chips and it would be easier to steal the card then to recreate the chip physically. And no they are not RFID, they require physical contact (as a scare story last year mistakenly made out)
3: Magnetic stripe info and pin is not enough to use a card. These cards cannot be read without the chip (I assume if you try, the card gets swallowed). There was an incident last year when cloned chip and pin cards which didn't have the chip would be read in some ATMs in India causing accounts to get emptied but this was down to sloppy authorisation techniques by the banks in question (it should've been obvious the holders weren't in India, withdrawing 500quid from outdated, insecure ATMs).
In real life, most countries accept that you have a right to privacy in your own home (there are a few exceptions but most of those involve crimes being committed). You have to invite people in for them to be sound legally to film. However it's easy to impose conditions on entry that visitors have to agree on, one being that all photography has to be approved and ok'd before publishing.
It's one of the things art museums and some attractions at themeparks often like doing so they can sell you £2.50 postcards (it's for the protection of the exhibits, honest!).
However this often interferes with public interest which is a freedom granted to the press. Does public interest outweigh a private civil agreement made? I'm not a lawyer, I haven't a clue but it must've sparked a fair few expensive trials.
This is a common issue in products designed for functionality rather than how easy it is to use, which, unfortunately is a major issue with quite a few of the big software packages. When I tried to use the GIMP for instance I was greeted with a horrible mess of floating windows and quickly switched back to paintshop pro (I only do light editing). Linux had to deal for years with requiring users to use a commandline interface to do certain things and although it's improved greatly, unexperienced users reading magazines and articles about how to do certain things and being presenting with lines of script they don't understand can be intimidated.
Modular design is also problem of all software in general. For example medium to advanced users may be fine with installing codecs for their video files but unexperienced users often don't have a clue to do (who hasn't had to deal with "how do I play.avi files, I keep getting errors" from family). Codec packs only go partway to solving what is a major problem and even video lan centre, a piece of software which eliminates the need for codecs, then goes and relies on plugins and addons for everything.
Except that comment predicts nothing that's relevant the sales figures or sales trend of the Zune. Only thing it says is "people are uneasy about change" which anyone could tell you.
I'm probably going to get all sorts of dictionary quotes but last time I checked, standard is a by-word for Norm.
Most people use Office, few use Open Office, why should it becoming the standard really suprise people? When you force standards which few people are already following you get the farce caused by the W3C who are constantly revising and ammending what was an established format so that every browser has a different implementation of the supposed standard and everyone of them has flaws in meeting it.
For demonstrating one of Firefox's clear problems.
"Last time I checked, Firefox was still open source software. If they're not fixing bugs fast enough for your liking, by all means, download the source and fix them yourself."
The fact is, 99.9% of users simply aren't capable of finding and fixing these bug. When Firefox has to compete with Opera and IE which generally don't have such basic bugs (copy & paste bug is still occuring for me in an updated version) and when people moan about problems, they tend to (eventually) get fixed. A sluggish response is always better than "fix it yourself" responses that result in long term bugs that plague firefox.
The trouble with things like this is that it potentially can be used for hard to spot hacks. Usually it's not to hard to scan for known hacking problems but when you introduce vmware/emulators/interpreters it gets complicated. if an simulated windows envoironment is isolated from the Linux side of things, potentially you could run a memory altering program in linux that effects the game without it being visible in the windows part.
Blizzard probably allowed it because such a tiny percentage use linux to run WoW that it's easier to monitor for dodgy activity. That said, if you've access to Windows I can't see you wanting to run it through windows. The game is demanding enough during raids without running through an emulator or whatever.
What happens if you discover that you've been infringing a patent for 6months+ and millions of people have downloaded the product? A commercial company would be able to just retroactively licence the IP and absorb the cost. Naturally you can't do that with OSS so legally speaking the makers are breaking the law as are all of its users. Releasing a patch that fixes it only prevents future charges being brought against you or lessens the infringement.
With OSS, as there is no option to purchase a licence you're relying on 'goodwill' of IP holders if something comes up that infringes on their properties. If Microsoft truely do have a big IP violation they have found in Linux then frankly, as long as they've initiate legal proceedings by the book the big linux distros would be in major trouble and it'd send huge ripples throughout the OSS community.
This may seem like I'm being picky but the 'adds up to 11' example you gave is an observation, not a proof, go to a high level mathetmatician and they'll tell you the same (incidently the proof that 1+1=2 is something like 50 pages of very complex maths iirc). Perhaps it's a more fitting analogy then you realise?
I was educated in physics up till A2 level (closest US equilivant is high school level) but most people aren't and won't go out and look at these papers, either because they can't have access or are unable or unwilling to spend their freetime reading. That's why it should be the responsibility of educational establishments to give people the whole picture of important issues rather than a blinkered view
There is no such thing as a fact in science, only evidence and theories, sounds like you should be asking for a refund.
1000years ago it was Fact that there were only four elements, 400 years ago it was fact the sun revolved around the Earth, 100 or so years ago it was a fact that an atom was the smallest thing in the universe. Science is constantly evolving and what used to be a commonly accepted theory may later be proven false. Many children are brought up with the simple equation F=MA and believe it to be correct until they hit more advanced quantum physics and learn that it's an over simplification that will always produces inaccuracies (just not significant until you get to high velocities).
The only thing that's constant about science is that our perception of it is always changing, the second we accept things as fact is the second scientific progress will end.
Through-out my schoolastic life I was never ever taught anything other than the greenhouse effect is going on as we speak and global warming is all our fault. The curriculum over here never even covers possible alternative theories and/or the flaws with global warming theories.
In every other aspect of science we were taught alternatives to established theories to compare the merits and why one theory is more valid than others, from Ether to creationism. If you're taught alternatives alongside the norm you can get a far better understanding of science and helps you analyse things better. With global warming we were never given alternate theories, we were given the one theory and told to accept it. We're told to question everything throughout science yet we're told to accept a theory which has minimal proof outside of simulations and small scale tests.
There has never been a debate about the cons of the greenhouse effect theory, we're just forced to accept it. By flat out saying "you're wrong" to deniers you acheive nothing but make them more determined. The critisisms should be in the public arena so that people can feel their making their own decisions rather than feel they're being given propoganda.
It always seems to me that when scientists 'debunk' global warming naysayers, they result to attacks on methology(sp?) then their facts. To me it screams Gallileo and Darwin when scientists were attacked because they went against the tide (although there is no religious element). I love the way that that advisor was supposedly correct because the temperiture increase was within his 'mid range'. The scientist was so confident of global warming he had to do a wide range of temp increases in his 'predictions' I may not be a scientist but I certainly know enough about statistics to predict the next result in a clear trend, especially if I use an wide range of values.
There's always talk about the fact there needs to be 'more debate' over climate change, especially here in the UK but it's not debate, it's "we're telling you this is going to happen, do something about it". It's bad science to assume that one theory is the correct one, especially in the case of Global Warming where it's incredibly difficult to tell if it's a natural change (things like this HAVE happened in the past, Ice age anyone?). There was a time when the destruction of the rainforests were blamed for CO2 not balancing out, then scientists discovered that the majority of CO2 absorption happens from algae in the sea and rainforests are only a time portion of the world's CO2 stores. It's not a coincidence that the whole 'save the rainforests' is a lot quieter now than in the 90's. The 'Football Field every minute' prooved to be a lie that was circulated in that time.
I'm not saying manmade climate change is a myth but you need both sides of an argument to be presented to the public, not for them to be brainwashed.
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Greek philosophers have proven that Americans actually pay infinate tax on prizes. You get money, you get a tax bill for that money, you get sent more money to cover the taxes, get a tax bill for that, get sent more money to cover the tax....
1: Unless you're planning to buy an awful lot of laptops, these people are crucial
2: yes they'll buy it elsewhere. On ebay or reseller sites for $100 less. If people can get something cheap, they will
3: The receipient is free to do whatever they want with the laptop. People do and will bid on the auctions though. Scalpers have been thriving since before Ebay was even invented and it's only got worse since then.
4: not for a charity. If you're not making product on a product and a rival can make a superior product for not much more and you can't match them technologically, you don't have many options of improving sales.
5: Why do you think charities do these "just $5 a month can feed a family for a lifetime" over calls for one off donations now? because people don't like seeing a huge chunk taken out of their bank account. Now maybe if they did do a similar thing to these charities that advertise on TV they'd have more success but it seems they're looking at making people pay a big chunk of change in one go. I don't know anyone who would be happy giving $100 away to someone they don't know.
6 and 7: because these donations aren't sustainable, they're relying on big payments from organisations and it will be increasingly difficult to find organisations willing to fund the project as I imagine that most will only contribute a single time to the project.
First of all: Tell people they haven't got the job, in a letter preferably. Nothing worse then not knowing. If you have critisism, disguise it and make it in regards to other candidates (the successfull applicant showed a much stronger knowledge of xyz). Chances are they know their skill shortcomings but occasionally they won't and you have to be sure that you don't critisize something so heavily it destroys them.
You cannot buy this product elsewhere without a huge markup, that's the underlying flaw of the project. For people who may be struggling to feed their families and where university grads can expect just $40 a month, $200 is just too hard to turn down. Even worse, I suspect lots would find $50 hard to turn down which is where this project falls down.
That's not even considering the competitor option (this argument is only vaguely related). Intel's Eduwise laptop is $400 and packs a 900mhz celeron M compared to the 350mhz geode in the OLPC. If They're going to charge $350 for this and for $50 you can get a system that's a whole generation more powerfull and will still no doubt run Linux.
The OLPC people don't seem to have researched just how many people would feel comfortable essentially giving away $100-$200 to charity. There's been lots of buzz from linux enthusiasts and homebrew types but how many parents in the West have they talked to in regards to pricing? This thing needs to sell in the high 100,000's in the west for the project to be successfull and so far all I've seen them talk about is the charity side. They need to really look at the viability of the western side of things from a business perspective and I don't think they are.
wouldn't work, the legitimate card reader would identify the card details as a Chip and pin and wouldn't authorise the transaction.
That's not exactly something you could do at a counter, you'd need to spend a significant amount of time with the card. You'd have to steal the card which would make the whole hacking the chip think rather redundant.
1: they cannot authorise the transaction using this method so the customer wouldn't be able to pay for what they intended to buy. The second a chip and pin card reader is opened and modification is attempted, it bricks itself. This would mean it's impossible to modify the internals and still enable the reader to contact a bank. Shops would notice pretty fast if lots of people were stealing goods and getting someone to swipe the card in two different readers (one fake, one real) would quickly get you reported.
2: it is impossible to clone a chip using a reader. The chip only accepts certain encrypted commands and responds differently each time to these commands in a way only the bank is able to decrypt. It's not possible to dump these chips and it would be easier to steal the card then to recreate the chip physically. And no they are not RFID, they require physical contact (as a scare story last year mistakenly made out)
3: Magnetic stripe info and pin is not enough to use a card. These cards cannot be read without the chip (I assume if you try, the card gets swallowed). There was an incident last year when cloned chip and pin cards which didn't have the chip would be read in some ATMs in India causing accounts to get emptied but this was down to sloppy authorisation techniques by the banks in question (it should've been obvious the holders weren't in India, withdrawing 500quid from outdated, insecure ATMs).
It's one of the things art museums and some attractions at themeparks often like doing so they can sell you £2.50 postcards (it's for the protection of the exhibits, honest!).
However this often interferes with public interest which is a freedom granted to the press. Does public interest outweigh a private civil agreement made? I'm not a lawyer, I haven't a clue but it must've sparked a fair few expensive trials.
Modular design is also problem of all software in general. For example medium to advanced users may be fine with installing codecs for their video files but unexperienced users often don't have a clue to do (who hasn't had to deal with "how do I play .avi files, I keep getting errors" from family). Codec packs only go partway to solving what is a major problem and even video lan centre, a piece of software which eliminates the need for codecs, then goes and relies on plugins and addons for everything.
...Will no doubt include it in the specifications, wait 3 years till everyone is using it then depriciate it and force people to use a CSS equilivant.
The sixaxis must be twice as good! Either that or Sony failed geometry...
Except that comment predicts nothing that's relevant the sales figures or sales trend of the Zune. Only thing it says is "people are uneasy about change" which anyone could tell you.
Just like happens with 99% of consumer products that have glitzy launches?
Seriously this is a piece of non-news turned into Microsoft bashing.
2: you have to clean your filter A LOT, lots of impurities in used oil
3: In most countries, you still have to pay tax on it as it's classed as fuel
4: If you want to start it in cold weather you have to heat the fuel pipes to ensure the veg oil isn't too thick to be used.
Most people use Office, few use Open Office, why should it becoming the standard really suprise people? When you force standards which few people are already following you get the farce caused by the W3C who are constantly revising and ammending what was an established format so that every browser has a different implementation of the supposed standard and everyone of them has flaws in meeting it.
however this finding certainly cements the theory
"Last time I checked, Firefox was still open source software. If they're not fixing bugs fast enough for your liking, by all means, download the source and fix them yourself."
The fact is, 99.9% of users simply aren't capable of finding and fixing these bug. When Firefox has to compete with Opera and IE which generally don't have such basic bugs (copy & paste bug is still occuring for me in an updated version) and when people moan about problems, they tend to (eventually) get fixed. A sluggish response is always better than "fix it yourself" responses that result in long term bugs that plague firefox.
Blizzard probably allowed it because such a tiny percentage use linux to run WoW that it's easier to monitor for dodgy activity. That said, if you've access to Windows I can't see you wanting to run it through windows. The game is demanding enough during raids without running through an emulator or whatever.
With OSS, as there is no option to purchase a licence you're relying on 'goodwill' of IP holders if something comes up that infringes on their properties. If Microsoft truely do have a big IP violation they have found in Linux then frankly, as long as they've initiate legal proceedings by the book the big linux distros would be in major trouble and it'd send huge ripples throughout the OSS community.
This may seem like I'm being picky but the 'adds up to 11' example you gave is an observation, not a proof, go to a high level mathetmatician and they'll tell you the same (incidently the proof that 1+1=2 is something like 50 pages of very complex maths iirc). Perhaps it's a more fitting analogy then you realise?
I was educated in physics up till A2 level (closest US equilivant is high school level) but most people aren't and won't go out and look at these papers, either because they can't have access or are unable or unwilling to spend their freetime reading. That's why it should be the responsibility of educational establishments to give people the whole picture of important issues rather than a blinkered view
1000years ago it was Fact that there were only four elements, 400 years ago it was fact the sun revolved around the Earth, 100 or so years ago it was a fact that an atom was the smallest thing in the universe. Science is constantly evolving and what used to be a commonly accepted theory may later be proven false. Many children are brought up with the simple equation F=MA and believe it to be correct until they hit more advanced quantum physics and learn that it's an over simplification that will always produces inaccuracies (just not significant until you get to high velocities).
The only thing that's constant about science is that our perception of it is always changing, the second we accept things as fact is the second scientific progress will end.
it's lazy for people under 16 not to read research papers? You must've had one strict school!
In every other aspect of science we were taught alternatives to established theories to compare the merits and why one theory is more valid than others, from Ether to creationism. If you're taught alternatives alongside the norm you can get a far better understanding of science and helps you analyse things better. With global warming we were never given alternate theories, we were given the one theory and told to accept it. We're told to question everything throughout science yet we're told to accept a theory which has minimal proof outside of simulations and small scale tests.
There has never been a debate about the cons of the greenhouse effect theory, we're just forced to accept it. By flat out saying "you're wrong" to deniers you acheive nothing but make them more determined. The critisisms should be in the public arena so that people can feel their making their own decisions rather than feel they're being given propoganda.
There's always talk about the fact there needs to be 'more debate' over climate change, especially here in the UK but it's not debate, it's "we're telling you this is going to happen, do something about it". It's bad science to assume that one theory is the correct one, especially in the case of Global Warming where it's incredibly difficult to tell if it's a natural change (things like this HAVE happened in the past, Ice age anyone?). There was a time when the destruction of the rainforests were blamed for CO2 not balancing out, then scientists discovered that the majority of CO2 absorption happens from algae in the sea and rainforests are only a time portion of the world's CO2 stores. It's not a coincidence that the whole 'save the rainforests' is a lot quieter now than in the 90's. The 'Football Field every minute' prooved to be a lie that was circulated in that time.
I'm not saying manmade climate change is a myth but you need both sides of an argument to be presented to the public, not for them to be brainwashed.