Well perhaps it is paranoia to a degree, but then back when we were landing on the Moon, all sorts of people were concerned that the astronauts would bring back some kind of "Moon germs" that would spread death all over the Earth. Hence the Lunar Receiving Laboratory and Michael Crichton writing a lovely book made into a good movie called "The Andromeda Strain"...
While it was a legal "win" for Microsoft, it's hardly a win in normal terms. They spent a lot of money defending themselves against a frivolous patent lawsuit and while that is a drop in the bucket compared to what they make, it would only be a true win if Alcatel-Lucent were made to pay up for bringing it in the first place. As long as Alcatel-Lucent can keep doing this, and I'm not sure how deep their pockets are, this is not over by a long shot. Microsoft needs to push to try and recoup legal fees, though I doubt any court will believe they need the money.
Because it's Dvorak saying it, it must be false, but then even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. I'm almost sure of this -- there's been such worship at the altar of Web 2.0 that people have not been noticing the river rising outside their windows. Web 2.0 has been touted as the next coming, but along with the positive gains there have been the inherent flaws and security problems. Pile on top of that the general low quality of programming nowadays and one has to ask how long before it does happen. Dvorak is not the sharpest tack in the box much of the time, but he has picked up on trends which would be apparent to anyone if they were looking. As to me, I'm going to start building my ark.
In an informal context, sure, a few emoticons are acceptable. In a formal situation, you need to take the time to make sure your writing accurately conveys your opinions and feelings, even if you have to spell it out more than you would in person.
I think it's safe to say emoticons are more useful in a context where you are communicating with someone where you have not established any other previous relationship, i.e. someone you may not have met before or may know only from exchanging emails. Without the other channels of information to draw on, it would be better to include them to establish your style of conversation/writing. I don't tend to use them myself, mainly because I generally only communicate directly with people I know and who know me, so they are able to interpret what I say in context.
All I can say is, FUD of the highest order. No astronaut in his/her right mind (Nowak notwithstanding) would be drunk on launch day. There are dozens of abort scenarios a Shuttle astronaut has to be ready for if something goes wrong and no astronaut would jeopardize their safety and the safety of their crewmates by being less than 100% ready to go. I also don't believe for a second that any Shuttle commander would let someone fly on their crew if they were inebriated.
NASA bashing has now become a fashionable side profession for some, especially with the emergence of private space flight ventures. Say what you will about NASA management (and there's plenty I'd like to say!) but they do the best they can with what they're given and it's only pressure from the US Government combined with a desire to return to the glory days that pushes them into decisions that can be called questionable. Hubris may play a role, but not as big a role as the constant need to justify their existence to a public that has become blasé about spaceflight.
I thought the reason companies hired expensive consultants was to listen to them.
Nope. They hire consultants to their dirty work. It used to be the case that consultants were hired for their insight, but I think that ended in the 80's. Now they want you to come in, fix their problems, and have you handy to blame for their inane decisions. New age, new rules.
I'd say this is a targeted theft by someone who knew damn well that those tapes would be going home with someone...Easy information to have because you know that, as many consultants as they've cycled through that place, tons of people knew their policy.
I know who did it -- the last intern they fired for doing what he was told even though it was idiotic.
Seriously, every President of the United States goes through this at one point or another. You're the most visible representation of authority in the United States, so when something bad happens, people blame you. Doesn't matter that you had no way of doing it, no control over the process that caused it, or didn't care about it. I don't think W is going to rank up there with the best President's when it's all said and done, and he's certainly not on my Christmas card list, but the rampant need to blame everything on him is ludicrous. Besides, we Americans only have ourselves to blame -- we elected him! Well... I didn't... I voted for Optimus Prime...
The problem is, whether you are a $125 per hour consultant or $25 per hour consultant, the company that hired you isn't going to listen to you. They hired you to do some tedious, boring work that none of the regular employees wanted to touch. They don't expect or want you involved in changing procedures, creating new standards, or streamlining the code base. They simply want you to show up, do your coding, and go home. Consulting is no fun, except the paychecks tend to be pretty good.
Not much to the article. I mean it's a given that Dell would want better drivers -- no one's going to buy a PC that they can't hook up to their favorite monitor and use right out of the box.
Already there. I don't need my mobile doing everything under the sun. I don't want to be able to surf the web on my phone, don't need it to be my electronic organizer, or even take pictures/video. I need it to be a reliable communications device, which it most assuredly is not. When my reception is not failing the phone is exhibiting all sorts of quirks that make it the electronic equivalent of a schizophrenic.
And face it -- the average consumer only buys these things because marketers tell them they should. I suspect if you took a random sample of 1 million cell phone users in the US, you'd find a good chunk of them don't use most of the functions their phone offers, and a subset of them probably don't even know they have certain capabilities in their phone.
I still think all this stuff devolves on parents to monitor and supervise their kids; in the absence of a reliable way to make sure underage people aren't involved, that's the only workable solution.
The problem being that most parents are far less tech-savvy than their kids. I seriously doubt most parents have a handle on their first life, let alone Second Life.
Actually, the best way would be to use subjects which have no subjective bias: rabbits, monkeys, etc. After all, they are trying to test whether or not the masts are causing the symptoms. Mind you, they cannot control for other possible environmental influences, i.e. other sources of radiation, because they are so prevalent and widely varied. The drawback to using animals is that how do you know if they are nauseous or dizzy?
I'm going to save them a lot of trouble and expense and posit that the masts are not causing the symptoms, from the standpoint of radiation exposure, because radiation is all around, in various intensities and wavelengths all the time. While I don't have my old astrophysics textbooks handy and I don't have statistics on cell tower emission strengths, I'm willing to bet the extra amount of radiation from the masts is insignificant compared to the general background radiation and would only pose a threat if it were highly concentrated and you were living in extremely close proximity.
Rather than move it around, it should have small relay points which are cheap and easy to move around. More importantly, you would be able to set up multiple power points and beam them in various areas.
I believe that was called the Star Wars Missile Defense System... but on the serious side, that's a pretty good idea, as long as you can solve some basic problems like accurate aiming, beam attenuation through an atmosphere, etc.
Ok, this is going to sound crazy (but when has that ever stopped me?), but who needs to beam the energy anywhere? Introducing: space wires. Hey , if someone can come up with the seemingly hare-brained idea of the space elevator to haul things up out of the gravity well, then how about lines running down from space to transmission points on the ground? Yes, I know... feasibility is an issue, but hey that's part of the fun!
You also have top take into account the fact that Microsoft only has Windows, and at that only a few supported versions (XP, Vista), as opposed to the profusion of flavors of Linux. "Windows" as an identifier is more familiar to the common user than Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. So yes, Linux has lagged behind in stepping up to work with the desktop environment in a more substantial fashion, but it won't happen until there's enough of a reason, e.g. people actually get the word that there is an alternative to Windows and it can be as easy to use (with some time and practice).
I take it you don't intend on ever becoming a CEO then? A company has to buy products/services that meet its requirements -- if that means they buy from MS or IBM, so be it. And most CEOs are not in the habit of overturning the judgments of their technical people -- they are interested in the big picture of the company as a whole, not the minutia of day-to-day operations. The don't care what hardware/software is used, as long as it runs, works, and they don't have to hear about it from shareholders.
I think this calls for a double-blind experiment with a larger sample size, say 20 laptops. 10 laptops are held out and left untouched; the other ten will either be infected with Blue Pill or not based on a random coin flip. Then it would not just be a question of detecting it, but detecting it to a sufficient degree to put it beyond chance. A 50-50 shot is just too high to be regarded as accurate.
Slashdot Mirror
Well perhaps it is paranoia to a degree, but then back when we were landing on the Moon, all sorts of people were concerned that the astronauts would bring back some kind of "Moon germs" that would spread death all over the Earth. Hence the Lunar Receiving Laboratory and Michael Crichton writing a lovely book made into a good movie called "The Andromeda Strain"...
While it was a legal "win" for Microsoft, it's hardly a win in normal terms. They spent a lot of money defending themselves against a frivolous patent lawsuit and while that is a drop in the bucket compared to what they make, it would only be a true win if Alcatel-Lucent were made to pay up for bringing it in the first place. As long as Alcatel-Lucent can keep doing this, and I'm not sure how deep their pockets are, this is not over by a long shot. Microsoft needs to push to try and recoup legal fees, though I doubt any court will believe they need the money.
Because it's Dvorak saying it, it must be false, but then even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. I'm almost sure of this -- there's been such worship at the altar of Web 2.0 that people have not been noticing the river rising outside their windows. Web 2.0 has been touted as the next coming, but along with the positive gains there have been the inherent flaws and security problems. Pile on top of that the general low quality of programming nowadays and one has to ask how long before it does happen. Dvorak is not the sharpest tack in the box much of the time, but he has picked up on trends which would be apparent to anyone if they were looking. As to me, I'm going to start building my ark.
Duh!
Besides, pornography is the purview of the PIAA...
I think it's safe to say emoticons are more useful in a context where you are communicating with someone where you have not established any other previous relationship, i.e. someone you may not have met before or may know only from exchanging emails. Without the other channels of information to draw on, it would be better to include them to establish your style of conversation/writing. I don't tend to use them myself, mainly because I generally only communicate directly with people I know and who know me, so they are able to interpret what I say in context.
All I can say is, FUD of the highest order. No astronaut in his/her right mind (Nowak notwithstanding) would be drunk on launch day. There are dozens of abort scenarios a Shuttle astronaut has to be ready for if something goes wrong and no astronaut would jeopardize their safety and the safety of their crewmates by being less than 100% ready to go. I also don't believe for a second that any Shuttle commander would let someone fly on their crew if they were inebriated.
NASA bashing has now become a fashionable side profession for some, especially with the emergence of private space flight ventures. Say what you will about NASA management (and there's plenty I'd like to say!) but they do the best they can with what they're given and it's only pressure from the US Government combined with a desire to return to the glory days that pushes them into decisions that can be called questionable. Hubris may play a role, but not as big a role as the constant need to justify their existence to a public that has become blasé about spaceflight.
Nope. They hire consultants to their dirty work. It used to be the case that consultants were hired for their insight, but I think that ended in the 80's. Now they want you to come in, fix their problems, and have you handy to blame for their inane decisions. New age, new rules.
I know who did it -- the last intern they fired for doing what he was told even though it was idiotic.
Which leads to the obligatory:
You don't know the power of the Dark Side
Seriously, every President of the United States goes through this at one point or another. You're the most visible representation of authority in the United States, so when something bad happens, people blame you. Doesn't matter that you had no way of doing it, no control over the process that caused it, or didn't care about it. I don't think W is going to rank up there with the best President's when it's all said and done, and he's certainly not on my Christmas card list, but the rampant need to blame everything on him is ludicrous. Besides, we Americans only have ourselves to blame -- we elected him! Well... I didn't... I voted for Optimus Prime...
The problem is, whether you are a $125 per hour consultant or $25 per hour consultant, the company that hired you isn't going to listen to you. They hired you to do some tedious, boring work that none of the regular employees wanted to touch. They don't expect or want you involved in changing procedures, creating new standards, or streamlining the code base. They simply want you to show up, do your coding, and go home. Consulting is no fun, except the paychecks tend to be pretty good.
Not much to the article. I mean it's a given that Dell would want better drivers -- no one's going to buy a PC that they can't hook up to their favorite monitor and use right out of the box.
Already there. I don't need my mobile doing everything under the sun. I don't want to be able to surf the web on my phone, don't need it to be my electronic organizer, or even take pictures/video. I need it to be a reliable communications device, which it most assuredly is not. When my reception is not failing the phone is exhibiting all sorts of quirks that make it the electronic equivalent of a schizophrenic.
And face it -- the average consumer only buys these things because marketers tell them they should. I suspect if you took a random sample of 1 million cell phone users in the US, you'd find a good chunk of them don't use most of the functions their phone offers, and a subset of them probably don't even know they have certain capabilities in their phone.
The problem being that most parents are far less tech-savvy than their kids. I seriously doubt most parents have a handle on their first life, let alone Second Life.
Actually, the best way would be to use subjects which have no subjective bias: rabbits, monkeys, etc. After all, they are trying to test whether or not the masts are causing the symptoms. Mind you, they cannot control for other possible environmental influences, i.e. other sources of radiation, because they are so prevalent and widely varied. The drawback to using animals is that how do you know if they are nauseous or dizzy?
I'm going to save them a lot of trouble and expense and posit that the masts are not causing the symptoms, from the standpoint of radiation exposure, because radiation is all around, in various intensities and wavelengths all the time. While I don't have my old astrophysics textbooks handy and I don't have statistics on cell tower emission strengths, I'm willing to bet the extra amount of radiation from the masts is insignificant compared to the general background radiation and would only pose a threat if it were highly concentrated and you were living in extremely close proximity.
I believe that was called the Star Wars Missile Defense System... but on the serious side, that's a pretty good idea, as long as you can solve some basic problems like accurate aiming, beam attenuation through an atmosphere, etc.
Ok, this is going to sound crazy (but when has that ever stopped me?), but who needs to beam the energy anywhere? Introducing: space wires. Hey , if someone can come up with the seemingly hare-brained idea of the space elevator to haul things up out of the gravity well, then how about lines running down from space to transmission points on the ground? Yes, I know... feasibility is an issue, but hey that's part of the fun!
One word... ants.
You also have top take into account the fact that Microsoft only has Windows, and at that only a few supported versions (XP, Vista), as opposed to the profusion of flavors of Linux. "Windows" as an identifier is more familiar to the common user than Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. So yes, Linux has lagged behind in stepping up to work with the desktop environment in a more substantial fashion, but it won't happen until there's enough of a reason, e.g. people actually get the word that there is an alternative to Windows and it can be as easy to use (with some time and practice).
I second that... cell phones and toilets are a bad combination... for a great many reasons.
Yes, but they'd have to marry in a state which didn't require a blood test.
I take it you don't intend on ever becoming a CEO then? A company has to buy products/services that meet its requirements -- if that means they buy from MS or IBM, so be it. And most CEOs are not in the habit of overturning the judgments of their technical people -- they are interested in the big picture of the company as a whole, not the minutia of day-to-day operations. The don't care what hardware/software is used, as long as it runs, works, and they don't have to hear about it from shareholders.
I think this calls for a double-blind experiment with a larger sample size, say 20 laptops. 10 laptops are held out and left untouched; the other ten will either be infected with Blue Pill or not based on a random coin flip. Then it would not just be a question of detecting it, but detecting it to a sufficient degree to put it beyond chance. A 50-50 shot is just too high to be regarded as accurate.
Leading to the obligatory...
In Soviet Russia, (or on Slashdot), users filter AT&T!
No lost laptops... yet.