>"Taskbar Notification Area" and "System Tray" are both perfectly acceptable, and non-ambiguous, terms to refer to the icon area that sits to the left of the clock in Windows.
The problem is if I told my mom to click on the "Taskbar", or the "System Tray", she would have had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and I would have ended up having to describe it as the big blue bar with START on one end, anyway.
It seemed obvious to me that calling it a "start bar" from the beginning would save some time. Obviously I was wrong, but I can assure you, it would have taken even longer if I had started out calling it a taskbar.
>As a Mechanical Engineer you might want to reconsider your career choice.
I have been doing mechanical engineering-related work for nearly 20 years now. I started as a draftsman and have worked as a mechanical designer ever since, with a very brief stint doing CAD system administration. I am listed on several patents through my work with fiber-optic interconnect devices.
While it is certainly true, especially in very serious engineering endeavors, that mathematical calculations are essential, and highly complicated. If you are designing aircraft, or rocket engines, or bridges, I'm sure there is a lot of mathematics involved.
But there is still lots of room in mechanical engineering for good old-fashioned mechanical intuition, and I have put it to good use over my career. My father, who is an actual PE in mechanical engineering, confirms that he has never used calculus since he left college, and he did and continues to to groundbreaking work with small internal combustion engines.
My work has revolved mostly around ruggedized electronics enclosure design for the last 10 years. I have used tools like Finite Element Analysis and hand-calculations to do my job, but generally nothing more sophisticated by hand than simple statics and basic algebra. It is true that I suffer from not understanding how to do FEA by hand, and thus one becomes very dangerously close to putting garbage in and getting garbage out and not knowing it, but fortunately the electronics tools are getting so simple that doing simple analysis are relatively easy and good mechanical intuition can usually tell you if you are getting good results or not, and testing will bear it out.
I can say that I have keenly felt my lack of true engineering background on occasion over the course of my career, which is why I am remedying that situation.
>Calculus III is the most tangible of Calculus for one to VISUALIZE seeing as we're dealing with boundaries in 3 dimensions that >allow one to determine the Volume, Torsion, Angular Acceleration, externally applied forces in Pressure and internally >expanding forces in Temperature of thin walled pressure vessels, Sheering Stress/Strain, so on and so forth.
I agree, and interestingly, I understand the CONCEPTS extremely well. I can see exactly what is being done and how it applies mechanically, and in fact I comment on this all the time to my fellow students who are kids with no real-world experience. I do Computer Aided Design every day so the entire course has basically been, for me, especially with my CS baground, a behind-the-scenes look at how such software functions to calculate end render and analyze 3D models. My failing comes from not being able to look at the mathematics and map it easily to the concept.
I've gotten a B in Calc I and II, and will probably do so in Calc III also, maybe even an A. I only have one more math class to take - Differential Equations.
Most of the problem in my early college career is that I was hell-bent to see how little effort I could put into my studies and squeek by passing. Much later as an adult it dawned on me that it is a million times less stressful to put in four times the effort and ace the class. For example, when I took Latin, I simply memorized all the vocabulary and the entire appendix of Wheelock's Latin. When I sat down to each test, I wrote out the appendix, and then used it as a decoder to translate Latin. It was a bitch memorizing the appedix, but tests were an absolute joke and not stressful at all.
Moreover, Intellectual Property is one of the last assets the United States has left to profit from. We don't actually make much anymore, we just invent it and have someone else make it. If we don't control the profits from the inventing, we're fucked.
>My personal largest problem, though, has to do with literacy. Though I'm quite skilled with language, excessive comma usage >notwithstanding, I find that when trying to read about advanced math or physics principles on Wikipedia for example, I'll see >a theorem written using symbols and functions that I know were covered in the math classes I had in high school but I can't >look at those same symbols and functions and turn them into words that accurately explain or describe the principle I'm reading. >Perhaps I'm alone in that situation, but attempting to read advanced theorems and math does give me insight into what text must >look like to illiterate people who still know their ABC's.
I share your exact sentiment.
I have been a definite non-traditional student. I started school in 1988 at Georgia Tech, and failed out after 2 years. Some 17 years later, I finished my BS in Computer Science.
I have taken and retaken math classes many times. When I was at Georgia Tech I got a C in Calc I, and then in Calc II I got W, F, D, F, and finally passed with a B. Then I moved to another state and had to take Calc II yet again. A few years ago I started working on my Mechanical Engineering degree, which requires Calculus III, so I took Calc I and II again to brush up. I got a B in Calc I and a B in Calc II and got a D taking Calc III. I am currently re-taking Calc III.
My problem is, I believe, that I have strung out my mathematical education over so long a period of time that I am not FLUENT IN THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS. It is, exactly as you state, a LITERACY PROBLEM. I firmly believe, as you seem to, that MATHEMATICS IS A LANGUAGE. Moreover, I believe, as you seem to also, that people who are fluent in mathematics actually "SEE" mathematical equations.
For example. I believe many people when they look at x^2 + y^2 = r^2 instantly recognize the equation of a circle. Now I have finally gained that understanding, BY ROTE, of that fact also. But I believe that people who are mathematically literate see more than just the pattern recognition that that equation means circle. I think they see equations and actually see WHAT IS GOING ON. I never do. I have to sit down and plug in values of X and Y and see what comes out. It's very tedious.
I think your last sentence was exactly dead-on. I liken the problem to handing an encyclopedia to a 5-year-old and asking them to read a passage. They will be focusing so hard on each word that they will not know what they have read at the end of a sentence. That is exactly how I feel trying to do Calculus. I am focusing so hard on the basic mathematics that I find it very difficult to put it all together to see the big picture.
It is very much a literacy problem, and I find it confounding. The only thing for it, I'm afraid, is to do more and more and more maths until one gains the familiarity one has just as one does with reading. The problem is time. I just don't have the time, with a full-time job and a family, to do it.
I haven't been able to help but think, over the years of taking higher-level math classes, that there must be a better way to learn this stuff. The science of Calculus is some 400 years old, some parts much older. Yet the way it is taught has not changed hardly at all. Now maybe there is no better way to learn it than doing it over and over until knowledge turns to understanding, but what keeps coming to me is that there must be a better way to VISUALIZE the abstract into something more concrete.
Example. The other day in Calc III we were talking about minimums and maximums, and how they might occur on the surface or along the surfaces boundary. So I said out loud, "So, the surface can either be a volcano or a potato chip but either way there is a high or low spot somewhere on it." And half the class said aloud, "Aaaaaahhh!" - they got it because they were able to VISUALIZE the abstract concept as something concrete.
The other day I was walking my mother through launching Windows Live Messenger, so we could video-chat and she could see the kids.
Here was the conversation:
Me: "Click on the icon on your start bar that looks like a little man." Her: "I don't see it." Me: "It's on your start bar." Her: "Ok, I see All Programs..." Me: "No. Not under Start, it's on your START BAR." Her: "I don't know what that is". Me: "Where is your clock." Her: "Uh....I don't know..." Me: "It's either at the top right or bottom right of your screen." Her: "OHHH! There it is! It's at the bottom right!" Me: "Congratulations, now you know what a clock looks like. OK, next to the clock are a bunch of icons. Double-click on the one that looks like a little man."
This was literally the conversation I had not two nights ago.
With people of this level of computer competence, they are going to fall for anything and everything. There's just nothing you can do for them.
I believe that these goal-oriented video games feed a false sense of accomplishment. My wife is into the Farmville. I was into Call of Duty, busy unlocking "perks". WoW people work on "levels".
All of these games have a similar draw - they feed a sense of accomplishment, very similar to as if you had actually done something meaningful. It triggers the same sense of reward in the brain.
I just bought a new computer, and installed Windows 7 on it.
I have decided to forego antivirus software.
It seems to me that these things, like DRM, are circumvented nearly instantaneously. In fact, I have come to view computer security just like DRM - a futile endeavor.
I know not to run.exe files from emails, and I know not to download and install files I don't trust. I'm behind a hardware firewall.
I've run AVG for years, and never had a detection.
We always get to the theater early to get good seats. I know just where to sit in our IMAX theater. This doesn't change the fact that IMAX, by definition, spans the scope of usual human eyesight, from periphery to periphery. And when an actor is talking on one periphery, you naturally move your focus there, and thus you miss the reaction of what is happening on the opposite side of the screen, even without moving your head, only your eyes.
Nonetheless, one typically, does naturally move their head towards the focus of attention.
IMAX works best with large landscapes where there is no particular focus of attention.
>Plagarism is not copying form a source. It is permissible to copy a definition from a >source and use it as a direct quotation, as long as it is clear it is a quotation, and >as long as you cite the source of the text.
I think that's what I said in my closing statement.
>Furthermore paraphrasing a unique idea without crediting the source of the idea is plagiarism, >even though it is not an exact copy.
Usually, when talking to school kids, "plagiarism" means copying word-for-word from some other source without citation.
Just about anything a school kid is going to be doing a report on will likely constitute "common knowledge". There is little, if any original research done in grade school.
I find IMAX to be useless for non-landscape footage.
Yes, IMAX is great when you are looking out over an ocean, or a moonscape, or a desert, or whatever, when you are simply "taking in a scene".
But IMAX is terrible for movies where there are characters on either end of the screen talking to each other.
For example, we went to see one of the Harry Potter movies in IMAX. It is like watching tennis - you constantly have to drive your attention, and turn your head, from the left to the right, in order to follow the dialog. And while you are looking at the person speaking on one side of the screen, you are missing the facial and other reaction by the characters on the OTHER side of the screen.
Unless a film was shot for IMAX, just blowing up the image size does not make it better.
I have never understood plagiarism. I mean, I understand being lazy, but damn. Do these people have such a low grasp of the English language that they cannot re-write, even trivially re-write a passage?
"A train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track (permanent way) to transport freight or passengers from one place to another. The track usually consists of two rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway."
What is so hard about writing:
A train is a vehicle made up of a series of connected sub-vehicles designed for providing transport along a track made of rails. These vehicles can be used to move passengers or freight from one place to another. The rails are usually laid in pairs, but sometimes a single rail, or even no rails, in the case of maglev trains, may be used.
I did that in about one minute. It's a complete re-write of the actual citation, without plagiarizing.
But if you really, really want to quote verbatim, why not just QUOTE VERBATIM, use quotation marks, and then cite with a footnote? I mean, damn, most teachers would practically have an orgasm reading something with an actual citation.
As I said before, most users don't care because there are usually no consequences to ignoring security directives.
Most users figure that security is the corporation's problem. They just figure that whatever they do will be protected "by the firewall" and they go on with life. It's not their problem if things go wrong.
People's crimes, their prosecution, and their punishment are all matters of public record. They always have been, and they should, as the last thing we want is a secret judicial system.
The difference was pre-internet, it was hard to find this information. Now, it's easy.
If people judge you because of a past criminal history, well, that's life.
For good or ill, I sense history being made here, folks. Basically the world is coming to grips with a global communications system, and is hammering out an accord on how it can be used.
Tivo failed because lots of people don't want to rent video recording ability as a service. They especially don't want to rent the service when what they record, and how long the recording lasts can be dictated by others.
If I were to buy a VCR again, it would have to function with no subscription service, and record anything and everything I told it to, and preserve those recordings indefinitely.
Of course nowadays we don't bother recording content off of TV to watch later, we just wait until "later" comes and rent it from Netflix.
The simple fact is, all this stuff we are hearing in the news lately about what tunes governments are making ISPs dance to is solely WHAT WE ARE HEARING ABOUT.
You can be quite certain that for every event we hear about, there are ten more we don't happening behind the scenes and gathering far more data.
Everyone should consider their internet connection completely open to (at least) government scrutiny at all times. You should assume that everything that passes through your ISP is recorded and monitored by at least your ISP, and is available to any government agency at any time.
You know what the hell of it is? If someone blew the whistle that the government was steaming open everyone's mail that passed through the USPS, people would be going ape-shit.
But the fact that they monitor all electronic communications? Yawn.
Slashdot Mirror
>"Taskbar Notification Area" and "System Tray" are both perfectly acceptable, and non-ambiguous, terms to refer to the icon area that sits to the left of the clock in Windows.
The problem is if I told my mom to click on the "Taskbar", or the "System Tray", she would have had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and I would have ended up having to describe it as the big blue bar with START on one end, anyway.
It seemed obvious to me that calling it a "start bar" from the beginning would save some time. Obviously I was wrong, but I can assure you, it would have taken even longer if I had started out calling it a taskbar.
>As a Mechanical Engineer you might want to reconsider your career choice.
I have been doing mechanical engineering-related work for nearly 20 years now. I started as a draftsman and have worked as a mechanical designer ever since, with a very brief stint doing CAD system administration. I am listed on several patents through my work with fiber-optic interconnect devices.
While it is certainly true, especially in very serious engineering endeavors, that mathematical calculations are essential, and highly complicated. If you are designing aircraft, or rocket engines, or bridges, I'm sure there is a lot of mathematics involved.
But there is still lots of room in mechanical engineering for good old-fashioned mechanical intuition, and I have put it to good use over my career. My father, who is an actual PE in mechanical engineering, confirms that he has never used calculus since he left college, and he did and continues to to groundbreaking work with small internal combustion engines.
My work has revolved mostly around ruggedized electronics enclosure design for the last 10 years. I have used tools like Finite Element Analysis and hand-calculations to do my job, but generally nothing more sophisticated by hand than simple statics and basic algebra. It is true that I suffer from not understanding how to do FEA by hand, and thus one becomes very dangerously close to putting garbage in and getting garbage out and not knowing it, but fortunately the electronics tools are getting so simple that doing simple analysis are relatively easy and good mechanical intuition can usually tell you if you are getting good results or not, and testing will bear it out.
I can say that I have keenly felt my lack of true engineering background on occasion over the course of my career, which is why I am remedying that situation.
>Calculus III is the most tangible of Calculus for one to VISUALIZE seeing as we're dealing with boundaries in 3 dimensions that
>allow one to determine the Volume, Torsion, Angular Acceleration, externally applied forces in Pressure and internally
>expanding forces in Temperature of thin walled pressure vessels, Sheering Stress/Strain, so on and so forth.
I agree, and interestingly, I understand the CONCEPTS extremely well. I can see exactly what is being done and how it applies mechanically, and in fact I comment on this all the time to my fellow students who are kids with no real-world experience. I do Computer Aided Design every day so the entire course has basically been, for me, especially with my CS baground, a behind-the-scenes look at how such software functions to calculate end render and analyze 3D models. My failing comes from not being able to look at the mathematics and map it easily to the concept.
I've gotten a B in Calc I and II, and will probably do so in Calc III also, maybe even an A. I only have one more math class to take - Differential Equations.
Most of the problem in my early college career is that I was hell-bent to see how little effort I could put into my studies and squeek by passing. Much later as an adult it dawned on me that it is a million times less stressful to put in four times the effort and ace the class. For example, when I took Latin, I simply memorized all the vocabulary and the entire appendix of Wheelock's Latin. When I sat down to each test, I wrote out the appendix, and then used it as a decoder to translate Latin. It was a bitch memorizing the appedix, but tests were an absolute joke and not stressful at all.
People do, it's called licensing.
Moreover, Intellectual Property is one of the last assets the United States has left to profit from. We don't actually make much anymore, we just invent it and have someone else make it. If we don't control the profits from the inventing, we're fucked.
>My personal largest problem, though, has to do with literacy. Though I'm quite skilled with language, excessive comma usage
>notwithstanding, I find that when trying to read about advanced math or physics principles on Wikipedia for example, I'll see
>a theorem written using symbols and functions that I know were covered in the math classes I had in high school but I can't
>look at those same symbols and functions and turn them into words that accurately explain or describe the principle I'm reading.
>Perhaps I'm alone in that situation, but attempting to read advanced theorems and math does give me insight into what text must
>look like to illiterate people who still know their ABC's.
I share your exact sentiment.
I have been a definite non-traditional student. I started school in 1988 at Georgia Tech, and failed out after 2 years. Some 17 years later, I finished my BS in Computer Science.
I have taken and retaken math classes many times. When I was at Georgia Tech I got a C in Calc I, and then in Calc II I got W, F, D, F, and finally passed with a B. Then I moved to another state and had to take Calc II yet again. A few years ago I started working on my Mechanical Engineering degree, which requires Calculus III, so I took Calc I and II again to brush up. I got a B in Calc I and a B in Calc II and got a D taking Calc III. I am currently re-taking Calc III.
My problem is, I believe, that I have strung out my mathematical education over so long a period of time that I am not FLUENT IN THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS. It is, exactly as you state, a LITERACY PROBLEM. I firmly believe, as you seem to, that MATHEMATICS IS A LANGUAGE. Moreover, I believe, as you seem to also, that people who are fluent in mathematics actually "SEE" mathematical equations.
For example. I believe many people when they look at x^2 + y^2 = r^2 instantly recognize the equation of a circle. Now I have finally gained that understanding, BY ROTE, of that fact also. But I believe that people who are mathematically literate see more than just the pattern recognition that that equation means circle. I think they see equations and actually see WHAT IS GOING ON. I never do. I have to sit down and plug in values of X and Y and see what comes out. It's very tedious.
I think your last sentence was exactly dead-on. I liken the problem to handing an encyclopedia to a 5-year-old and asking them to read a passage. They will be focusing so hard on each word that they will not know what they have read at the end of a sentence. That is exactly how I feel trying to do Calculus. I am focusing so hard on the basic mathematics that I find it very difficult to put it all together to see the big picture.
It is very much a literacy problem, and I find it confounding. The only thing for it, I'm afraid, is to do more and more and more maths until one gains the familiarity one has just as one does with reading. The problem is time. I just don't have the time, with a full-time job and a family, to do it.
I haven't been able to help but think, over the years of taking higher-level math classes, that there must be a better way to learn this stuff. The science of Calculus is some 400 years old, some parts much older. Yet the way it is taught has not changed hardly at all. Now maybe there is no better way to learn it than doing it over and over until knowledge turns to understanding, but what keeps coming to me is that there must be a better way to VISUALIZE the abstract into something more concrete.
Example. The other day in Calc III we were talking about minimums and maximums, and how they might occur on the surface or along the surfaces boundary. So I said out loud, "So, the surface can either be a volcano or a potato chip but either way there is a high or low spot somewhere on it." And half the class said aloud, "Aaaaaahhh!" - they got it because they were able to VISUALIZE the abstract concept as something concrete.
There has got to be a better way to con
The other day I was walking my mother through launching Windows Live Messenger, so we could video-chat and she could see the kids.
Here was the conversation:
Me: "Click on the icon on your start bar that looks like a little man."
Her: "I don't see it."
Me: "It's on your start bar."
Her: "Ok, I see All Programs..."
Me: "No. Not under Start, it's on your START BAR."
Her: "I don't know what that is".
Me: "Where is your clock."
Her: "Uh....I don't know..."
Me: "It's either at the top right or bottom right of your screen."
Her: "OHHH! There it is! It's at the bottom right!"
Me: "Congratulations, now you know what a clock looks like. OK, next to the clock are a bunch of icons. Double-click on the one that looks like a little man."
This was literally the conversation I had not two nights ago.
With people of this level of computer competence, they are going to fall for anything and everything. There's just nothing you can do for them.
I believe that these goal-oriented video games feed a false sense of accomplishment. My wife is into the Farmville. I was into Call of Duty, busy unlocking "perks". WoW people work on "levels".
All of these games have a similar draw - they feed a sense of accomplishment, very similar to as if you had actually done something meaningful. It triggers the same sense of reward in the brain.
It's addictive.
I just bought a new computer, and installed Windows 7 on it.
I have decided to forego antivirus software.
It seems to me that these things, like DRM, are circumvented nearly instantaneously. In fact, I have come to view computer security just like DRM - a futile endeavor.
I know not to run .exe files from emails, and I know not to download and install files I don't trust. I'm behind a hardware firewall.
I've run AVG for years, and never had a detection.
That's going to be the extent of my efforts.
We always get to the theater early to get good seats. I know just where to sit in our IMAX theater. This doesn't change the fact that IMAX, by definition, spans the scope of usual human eyesight, from periphery to periphery. And when an actor is talking on one periphery, you naturally move your focus there, and thus you miss the reaction of what is happening on the opposite side of the screen, even without moving your head, only your eyes.
Nonetheless, one typically, does naturally move their head towards the focus of attention.
IMAX works best with large landscapes where there is no particular focus of attention.
>Plagarism is not copying form a source. It is permissible to copy a definition from a
>source and use it as a direct quotation, as long as it is clear it is a quotation, and
>as long as you cite the source of the text.
I think that's what I said in my closing statement.
>Furthermore paraphrasing a unique idea without crediting the source of the idea is plagiarism,
>even though it is not an exact copy.
Usually, when talking to school kids, "plagiarism" means copying word-for-word from some other source without citation.
Just about anything a school kid is going to be doing a report on will likely constitute "common knowledge". There is little, if any original research done in grade school.
Steve
I find IMAX to be useless for non-landscape footage.
Yes, IMAX is great when you are looking out over an ocean, or a moonscape, or a desert, or whatever, when you are simply "taking in a scene".
But IMAX is terrible for movies where there are characters on either end of the screen talking to each other.
For example, we went to see one of the Harry Potter movies in IMAX. It is like watching tennis - you constantly have to drive your attention, and turn your head, from the left to the right, in order to follow the dialog. And while you are looking at the person speaking on one side of the screen, you are missing the facial and other reaction by the characters on the OTHER side of the screen.
Unless a film was shot for IMAX, just blowing up the image size does not make it better.
I have never understood plagiarism. I mean, I understand being lazy, but damn. Do these people have such a low grasp of the English language that they cannot re-write, even trivially re-write a passage?
If Wikipedia says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train
"A train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track (permanent way) to transport freight or passengers from one place to another. The track usually consists of two rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway."
What is so hard about writing:
A train is a vehicle made up of a series of connected sub-vehicles designed for providing transport along a track made of rails. These vehicles can be used to move passengers or freight from one place to another. The rails are usually laid in pairs, but sometimes a single rail, or even no rails, in the case of maglev trains, may be used.
I did that in about one minute. It's a complete re-write of the actual citation, without plagiarizing.
But if you really, really want to quote verbatim, why not just QUOTE VERBATIM, use quotation marks, and then cite with a footnote? I mean, damn, most teachers would practically have an orgasm reading something with an actual citation.
As I said before, most users don't care because there are usually no consequences to ignoring security directives.
Most users figure that security is the corporation's problem. They just figure that whatever they do will be protected "by the firewall" and they go on with life. It's not their problem if things go wrong.
>I assume we'd still be curious and want to observe them discreetly.
Why would you assume this? Man has never done this in any of his previous explorations, which are almost always adventures for profit.
When man explores someplace new, he immediately gets down to the business of business.
Of course, other space faring people might act differently, but I would not use mankind as an example of discretion in exploration.
I believe that anti-virus and other "security" methods are going to prove as fruitful as DRM schemes in the end.
It's increasingly obvious that any security scheme can be broken, just as any DRM scheme can be broken.
At some point there has to be a cost analysis where people end up just saying, "fuck it!"
If you don't have a place to shit, you probably can't vote, either.
So there ya go!
People's crimes, their prosecution, and their punishment are all matters of public record. They always have been, and they should, as the last thing we want is a secret judicial system.
The difference was pre-internet, it was hard to find this information. Now, it's easy.
If people judge you because of a past criminal history, well, that's life.
I don't understand the outcry of privacy advocates here.
All matters of criminal law are matters of public record, as they should be.
Making this information easily searchable is just technology, folks.
For good or ill, I sense history being made here, folks. Basically the world is coming to grips with a global communications system, and is hammering out an accord on how it can be used.
People have been fired here in the past for trying just that.
Every day I have to fire up a Microsoft Access database program to clock in.
Every day the first thing it does is pop up a dialog box that says something like, "Only run this if you trust it".
I just hit OK.
It's not my problem if it works right or not.
Tivo failed because lots of people don't want to rent video recording ability as a service. They especially don't want to rent the service when what they record, and how long the recording lasts can be dictated by others.
If I were to buy a VCR again, it would have to function with no subscription service, and record anything and everything I told it to, and preserve those recordings indefinitely.
Of course nowadays we don't bother recording content off of TV to watch later, we just wait until "later" comes and rent it from Netflix.
You are right.
The simple fact is, all this stuff we are hearing in the news lately about what tunes governments are making ISPs dance to is solely WHAT WE ARE HEARING ABOUT.
You can be quite certain that for every event we hear about, there are ten more we don't happening behind the scenes and gathering far more data.
Everyone should consider their internet connection completely open to (at least) government scrutiny at all times. You should assume that everything that passes through your ISP is recorded and monitored by at least your ISP, and is available to any government agency at any time.
You know what the hell of it is? If someone blew the whistle that the government was steaming open everyone's mail that passed through the USPS, people would be going ape-shit.
But the fact that they monitor all electronic communications? Yawn.
How do you think those rockets fly, anyway?