Similar to the DRM problem. The average user/consumer has no deep knowledge of the esoterica behind copyrights, etc. They simply want what they want. They don't realize that the content they get is not nearly as expansive as it would be if copyright and "fair use" were less of an issue. Marketing keeps people from caring -- "pay no attention to that fellow behind the curtain."
I somehow find it hard to believe that MS would want to warn other corporations about hiring him.
They might, but of course they can't come right out and say that, lest they be sued for defamation. In this society, former employers keep mum about employees who leave under any circumstances, making in-company references worthless, since employees still with the company are admonished to pass all requests for references to HR, and HR will only tell you that someone did in fact work at the company and when. In a way, this perpetuates the presence of employees with poor work skills, as they cannot truly be flagged as being bad employees, so they get picked up elsewhere. Put another way, it's harder to get a reputation in an industry than it used to be.
Except that, as we saw with the Isaiah Thomas case over at Madison Square Garden, if the company does nothing about it, they soon become the target of a lawsuit and there is the potentially messy publicity that goes with that. Mind you, people have said plenty of bad things about MS in regards to their software and their business practices, but the goings-on in Redmond are oft shrouded in mystery. When your CIO gets involved in something questionable, in this post-Enron world, you have to nip it in the bud quickly or face being dragged through the mud. The public doesn't care that Vista may suck, but they do care if there's a personal scandal at the highest level.
What no screen shots? No docs? Not even a pretty phone to look at? I mean who really cares until they show SOMETHING!
Exactly. Given that it's Google, there isn't even a beta to look at... But this is Google at its finest -- stirring up a hornet's nest, dropping hints and outright misdirections, then rolling out there own thing like they're surprised anyone had ever heard of it or knew it was coming. It certainly generates buzz.
Identification is only as good as the people screening it. You can standardize driver's license standards all over the place, but in the end, if the guy who is supposed to be scrutinizing the id isn't paying attention or is typically lackadaisical, the id is worthless. It's a mechanism in any formulaic Hollywood movie, but it happens to be true. When was the last time a sales clerk bothered to look on the back of your credit card for a signature, or compare it to the one written on the slip/screen?
But San Antonio is far enough inland that a Class 5 Hurricane isn't likely to affect it. Once the hurricane comes ashore and is deprived of its power source, it becomes more entangled in the local weather systems. I'm not sure even a 5 would pack sufficient power to drive that far inland and maintain its full destructive arsenal. IANAW.
and EVEN IF there is someone out there who is so stupid as to think posting this information is private: who amongst us ever thought it is our duty in this world to protect morons from themselves?
Well, it's not a news flash here in the tech community, but to the outside world it is. However, you don't see MSNBC, 20/20, or any of the other news shows spending a lot of time on this kind of subject. The Internet is still the 21st Century's version of the Wild West. When you think about it, it's a pretty lawless place, given that it crosses international boundaries, is subject to blocking/re-routing at the whim of some governments, and that no one group really controls it, despite the fact that everyone wants to put their stamp on it. The general populace still views the Internet as magic and has no regard for just how it all works. Like their cars, they don't notice anything is wrong until it breaks down for them.
Go it one better... make stuff up! Do you honestly think that the vast majority of Facebook users are reporting completely factual information in their profiles?
This is nothing new -- people say it about online searches, eBay auctions, Amazon.com profiles. Nobody is making anybody put their information on the Web. The only reason you would want it out there is to get noticed for something. If you're willing to accept that exposing your life details is going to expose you to all sorts of other unsavory things, then be happy. If not, lower you Web footprint and stay in the background.
San Antonio was no doubt chosen because it is remote, and unlikely to be exposed to a major natural disaster (flood, earthquake, hurricane, etc.). They are probably thinking of diversifying their data centers as much as possible, to guard against them becoming easy targets for physical destruction.
But isn't this how MS works anyway? Someone else comes up with idea, MS poo-poohs it, then comes out with their own version, which thanks to their market penetration is taken up by a large user base? It seems MS lets a lot of other people get a head start, so they can see how an application trends before committing larger resources to it. On the one hand brilliant -- on the other hand, pretty nefarious.
Although you could use the unlisted number analogy to argue the reverse. I pay for a phone, so that people can get in touch with me, but I don't want just anyone to be able to contact me, so I pay extra to have it unlisted. It goes back to what I said in a another post -- if you're worried about this, then charge for WHOIS lookups. As soon as it isn't worth someone's while to fork over millions of dollars just to look up some email addresses, the scammer and spammers will find other ways and leave the WHOIS database alone. More to the point, as with the analogy above, charge an extra fee to privatize your WHOIS data, and then make it so that when a WHOIS is performed on your site's name, the user has to put in a formal request to ICANN and/or the registrar for the information. The registrar could charge a fee to you to keep the info private, and a fee to anyone who wanted to look at the information, and they'd all be rich, fat, and happy (as if they weren't already).
Yes it is, but privacy pundits would have you believe we need to live behind brick walls coated with tin foil. Look, this information can be vital for tracking down the owners of web sites or at least providing a starting place when someone is trying to contact a web site owner and cannot reach them through other channels. If they are truly worried about the fact that scammers and spammers are going to rake the WHOIS database for suckers, then charge $5 for a look-up. No spammer is going to lay out 5 million dollars to scrape up a million email addresses.
Now, I do think that this model would work well for some elementary schools, and should be experimented with more than it is. I think that our current system of regimented divisions according to chronological age is a major problem. Also, I don't think the one-room-schoolhouse approach *automatically* leads to things like critical thinking - do you really think that the rural population of the late 1800s were better at logic than we are today?
I think you have to take it one step further. Not only would age clustering be abolished, so would actual grade-level advancement. I've always thought that children should be encouraged to learn at their own speed. With the advent of the Internet, this might be more possible that ever before. We always here about bright students being dragged down by their slower-learning peers, while at the same time those with problems learning are forced to keep up with everyone else and acquire a distaste for learning. I say, let them go at their own pace -- let students with the drive and desire to learn race ahead, while teachers concentrate more effort on those who need the help. Set learning mileposts (these will keep the standardized-testing crowd happy) that consist of exams in reasoning that a child should be able to accomplish after reaching a certain level of knowledge. When I went to school in Vermont, they had something called Basic Competencies, which were standardized sets of tasks that you had to prove you could perform in order to graduate from high school. I liked the idea of matching myself against actual tasks. I think that could be adapted to give students goals to strive for.
As to the rural population of the 1800s being better at logic, I bet they were, though you'd have to look at it contextually. If you took someone from this era back to the 1800s, would they be able to function as easily as someone from that era would function if brought into this one? I would suspect an 1800s person would be dazzled by the array of technology, and despite it all being unfamiliar, would be able to absorb the necessary information and adapt more easily. But that's just a personal opinion. I grew up in rural VT, and while no one I knew would be confused with Einstein, I did learn the rudiments of common sense for the rural approach to problem solving, which involves quite a bit of logic, despite any lack of formalism.
Think what you like -- that's the beauty of the system. But perhaps it is conceivable that we've let the finer liberal arts and sciences lose ground in school. I won't touch theology -- your religion is your own business. Does this mean teaching every child formal courses in Latin, Logic, and Elocution? No. However, what harm is there in trying to raise the standard a little bit at a time as opposed to watching slide into a morass of standardized test and canned answers. I think we owe it to kids to arm them with the tools they can use to succeed in life, and the better the tools, the more confidence they will gain and the greater strides they will make. If we continue to sink toward the lowest common denominator, there may come a time when we can no longer cope with even minor changes in our environment.
So my typing ability has tripped me up... often my words do not translate quickly or efficiently from brain to keyboard. I don't think that negates the premise: each passing generation is watered down further, so that the current generation of teachers has critical reasoning skills that are less robust than the previous generation, and they pass a weakened version of their reasoning skills on to the next generation, further diminishing them. I think it also has to do with the fact that critical reasoning is not necessarily required on a daily basis, given that we are not having to make our own clothes, grow our own food, or try to survive in a hostile landscape. The convenience of modern life does not challenge us or hone our survival skills.
It's true. But you have to consider that it's society that's trying to raise our kids now, not us. Where did all these laws requiring helmets come from? The nervous Nellies who think that they can do a better job raising my kid than I can, that's who. Those people who have been charmed into thinking psychology can point the way, that we have to worry about feelings more than experience. That's why I want my kids to play sports -- I want them to taste not only success, but defeat, to learn to move from one to the other, to develop the character to suck up a loss and use it improve themselves. People wonder why sports consumes such a large portion of our attention these days. It's because it's the last arena where the old natural systems still flourish, where you have to stand up on your own two feet, cast your lot in with the team, and give it your all if you're going to succeed. It's where a kid learns through hard work and hard knocks. Lolly-gaggers and quitters don't stand a chance in sports. Kids are certainly not getting those lessons in school, where touchy-feely has replaced logic and discipline. You want a kid to become a better person and have better self-esteem? Teach them how to learn and then encourage that impulse. A kid will develop more self-esteem taking on challenging puzzles and solving them than being told their feeling matter.
Which is the disconnect between technology and the mass market. The customer does not want to know how the computer works -- they only want it to work when they get it out of the box. Mind you, processor speed and hard drive are such that they really aren't the most critical factors in buying a PC anymore for your average user.
This is why Microsoft rules the software landscape, Linux is finding it difficult to make inroads into the PC market, and why Apple has everybody enamored with the iPod. Familiarity breeds contempt, and contempt breeds lack of understanding. All the customer knows is that their laptop works when they turn it out and Windows pops up, and they can use that to load songs on their iPod. The behind-the-scenes does not interest them, which is why the general populace doesn't have a clue about Net Neutrality or DRM.
I ascribe it to the fall of the hobbyist. In the heady days at the beginning of PC age, when guys were buying Altair kits and Ham radio ruled, I think there was a higher level of curiosity. But now I don't think ham radio clubs, computer clubs, or even astronomy clubs are popular anymore, given the instant access to information we have now. I see this trend continuing as long as technology does not require the user to put any thought into it.
Indeed. School used to be filled with logic and reasoning -- kids had to learn to think. Now schools are more interested in childrens' self-esteem and socialization. Frankly, part of the problem is that the newest crop of teachers don't know logic or have excellent critical reasoning skills. As each generation passes, we get further from the Aristotelian virtues and knowledge becomes more watered-down.
Nowhere is that more borne out than in computer programming. Logic is the backbone of programming and if you haven't got a decent grounding in it, your coding skills are going to be atrocious, no matter what language you use. I remember when I was going to school to about 8 years ago to get a programming certification so I could shift careers. There I was, in my mid-30s with 18-year-olds all around, who were more interested in Napster and trying to download porn onto the school computers than actually learning the skills they needed. They used to razz me quite a bit, but I got through the whole set of courses with a 4.0 because I had the logical background that made going from pseudo-code to finished program easier.
Until we get back to teaching fundamental reasoning skills in school, each succeeding generation is going to take their environment more and more for granted, and understand it less and less.
Scientific research is being abused even more in this sensationalist age. Listen, experimental design is simple, really, and therein lies the problem. It's easy enough to come up with a study, run on a limited population, at a level of probability just under then better-than-random threshold that will prove your pet theory. The number of factors involved in the commission of crimes (violent or otherwise) are so diverse, that to attribute it to one factor is absurd. Could it be an increase in law enforcement? Perhaps an increase in affluence in certain areas and/or reduction in poverty? Could it be the increased vigilance of people in general?
I find it very hard to believe that this study could have controls tight enough to take into account all the other factors involved in crime. I'm sure there are enough other things out there that correlate positively/negatively with the reduction in lead in gasoline that you could use this study to prove anything you like.
Slashdot Mirror
Similar to the DRM problem. The average user/consumer has no deep knowledge of the esoterica behind copyrights, etc. They simply want what they want. They don't realize that the content they get is not nearly as expansive as it would be if copyright and "fair use" were less of an issue. Marketing keeps people from caring -- "pay no attention to that fellow behind the curtain."
Aren't there sharks out there? Hmmmmmmmm....
They might, but of course they can't come right out and say that, lest they be sued for defamation. In this society, former employers keep mum about employees who leave under any circumstances, making in-company references worthless, since employees still with the company are admonished to pass all requests for references to HR, and HR will only tell you that someone did in fact work at the company and when. In a way, this perpetuates the presence of employees with poor work skills, as they cannot truly be flagged as being bad employees, so they get picked up elsewhere. Put another way, it's harder to get a reputation in an industry than it used to be.
Except that, as we saw with the Isaiah Thomas case over at Madison Square Garden, if the company does nothing about it, they soon become the target of a lawsuit and there is the potentially messy publicity that goes with that. Mind you, people have said plenty of bad things about MS in regards to their software and their business practices, but the goings-on in Redmond are oft shrouded in mystery. When your CIO gets involved in something questionable, in this post-Enron world, you have to nip it in the bud quickly or face being dragged through the mud. The public doesn't care that Vista may suck, but they do care if there's a personal scandal at the highest level.
Exactly. Given that it's Google, there isn't even a beta to look at... But this is Google at its finest -- stirring up a hornet's nest, dropping hints and outright misdirections, then rolling out there own thing like they're surprised anyone had ever heard of it or knew it was coming. It certainly generates buzz.
Two words: sexual harassment.
Identification is only as good as the people screening it. You can standardize driver's license standards all over the place, but in the end, if the guy who is supposed to be scrutinizing the id isn't paying attention or is typically lackadaisical, the id is worthless. It's a mechanism in any formulaic Hollywood movie, but it happens to be true. When was the last time a sales clerk bothered to look on the back of your credit card for a signature, or compare it to the one written on the slip/screen?
But San Antonio is far enough inland that a Class 5 Hurricane isn't likely to affect it. Once the hurricane comes ashore and is deprived of its power source, it becomes more entangled in the local weather systems. I'm not sure even a 5 would pack sufficient power to drive that far inland and maintain its full destructive arsenal. IANAW.
One word: Congress
Well, it's not a news flash here in the tech community, but to the outside world it is. However, you don't see MSNBC, 20/20, or any of the other news shows spending a lot of time on this kind of subject. The Internet is still the 21st Century's version of the Wild West. When you think about it, it's a pretty lawless place, given that it crosses international boundaries, is subject to blocking/re-routing at the whim of some governments, and that no one group really controls it, despite the fact that everyone wants to put their stamp on it. The general populace still views the Internet as magic and has no regard for just how it all works. Like their cars, they don't notice anything is wrong until it breaks down for them.
Go it one better... make stuff up! Do you honestly think that the vast majority of Facebook users are reporting completely factual information in their profiles?
This is nothing new -- people say it about online searches, eBay auctions, Amazon.com profiles. Nobody is making anybody put their information on the Web. The only reason you would want it out there is to get noticed for something. If you're willing to accept that exposing your life details is going to expose you to all sorts of other unsavory things, then be happy. If not, lower you Web footprint and stay in the background.
San Antonio was no doubt chosen because it is remote, and unlikely to be exposed to a major natural disaster (flood, earthquake, hurricane, etc.). They are probably thinking of diversifying their data centers as much as possible, to guard against them becoming easy targets for physical destruction.
Due to a shortage of skilled workers in Ireland, the Dublin data center will be partially staffed by leprechauns...
But isn't this how MS works anyway? Someone else comes up with idea, MS poo-poohs it, then comes out with their own version, which thanks to their market penetration is taken up by a large user base? It seems MS lets a lot of other people get a head start, so they can see how an application trends before committing larger resources to it. On the one hand brilliant -- on the other hand, pretty nefarious.
Although you could use the unlisted number analogy to argue the reverse. I pay for a phone, so that people can get in touch with me, but I don't want just anyone to be able to contact me, so I pay extra to have it unlisted. It goes back to what I said in a another post -- if you're worried about this, then charge for WHOIS lookups. As soon as it isn't worth someone's while to fork over millions of dollars just to look up some email addresses, the scammer and spammers will find other ways and leave the WHOIS database alone. More to the point, as with the analogy above, charge an extra fee to privatize your WHOIS data, and then make it so that when a WHOIS is performed on your site's name, the user has to put in a formal request to ICANN and/or the registrar for the information. The registrar could charge a fee to you to keep the info private, and a fee to anyone who wanted to look at the information, and they'd all be rich, fat, and happy (as if they weren't already).
Yes it is, but privacy pundits would have you believe we need to live behind brick walls coated with tin foil. Look, this information can be vital for tracking down the owners of web sites or at least providing a starting place when someone is trying to contact a web site owner and cannot reach them through other channels. If they are truly worried about the fact that scammers and spammers are going to rake the WHOIS database for suckers, then charge $5 for a look-up. No spammer is going to lay out 5 million dollars to scrape up a million email addresses.
You Shook Me All Night Long
Good Vibrations
Shake, Rattle, and Roll
All Shook Up
Didn't I just hear that the Storm worm was slowing to a crawl?
Now, I do think that this model would work well for some elementary schools, and should be experimented with more than it is. I think that our current system of regimented divisions according to chronological age is a major problem. Also, I don't think the one-room-schoolhouse approach *automatically* leads to things like critical thinking - do you really think that the rural population of the late 1800s were better at logic than we are today?
I think you have to take it one step further. Not only would age clustering be abolished, so would actual grade-level advancement. I've always thought that children should be encouraged to learn at their own speed. With the advent of the Internet, this might be more possible that ever before. We always here about bright students being dragged down by their slower-learning peers, while at the same time those with problems learning are forced to keep up with everyone else and acquire a distaste for learning. I say, let them go at their own pace -- let students with the drive and desire to learn race ahead, while teachers concentrate more effort on those who need the help. Set learning mileposts (these will keep the standardized-testing crowd happy) that consist of exams in reasoning that a child should be able to accomplish after reaching a certain level of knowledge. When I went to school in Vermont, they had something called Basic Competencies, which were standardized sets of tasks that you had to prove you could perform in order to graduate from high school. I liked the idea of matching myself against actual tasks. I think that could be adapted to give students goals to strive for.
As to the rural population of the 1800s being better at logic, I bet they were, though you'd have to look at it contextually. If you took someone from this era back to the 1800s, would they be able to function as easily as someone from that era would function if brought into this one? I would suspect an 1800s person would be dazzled by the array of technology, and despite it all being unfamiliar, would be able to absorb the necessary information and adapt more easily. But that's just a personal opinion. I grew up in rural VT, and while no one I knew would be confused with Einstein, I did learn the rudiments of common sense for the rural approach to problem solving, which involves quite a bit of logic, despite any lack of formalism.
Ah, a graduate of the Sarcasm Academy.
Think what you like -- that's the beauty of the system. But perhaps it is conceivable that we've let the finer liberal arts and sciences lose ground in school. I won't touch theology -- your religion is your own business. Does this mean teaching every child formal courses in Latin, Logic, and Elocution? No. However, what harm is there in trying to raise the standard a little bit at a time as opposed to watching slide into a morass of standardized test and canned answers. I think we owe it to kids to arm them with the tools they can use to succeed in life, and the better the tools, the more confidence they will gain and the greater strides they will make. If we continue to sink toward the lowest common denominator, there may come a time when we can no longer cope with even minor changes in our environment.
So my typing ability has tripped me up... often my words do not translate quickly or efficiently from brain to keyboard. I don't think that negates the premise: each passing generation is watered down further, so that the current generation of teachers has critical reasoning skills that are less robust than the previous generation, and they pass a weakened version of their reasoning skills on to the next generation, further diminishing them. I think it also has to do with the fact that critical reasoning is not necessarily required on a daily basis, given that we are not having to make our own clothes, grow our own food, or try to survive in a hostile landscape. The convenience of modern life does not challenge us or hone our survival skills.
It's true. But you have to consider that it's society that's trying to raise our kids now, not us. Where did all these laws requiring helmets come from? The nervous Nellies who think that they can do a better job raising my kid than I can, that's who. Those people who have been charmed into thinking psychology can point the way, that we have to worry about feelings more than experience. That's why I want my kids to play sports -- I want them to taste not only success, but defeat, to learn to move from one to the other, to develop the character to suck up a loss and use it improve themselves. People wonder why sports consumes such a large portion of our attention these days. It's because it's the last arena where the old natural systems still flourish, where you have to stand up on your own two feet, cast your lot in with the team, and give it your all if you're going to succeed. It's where a kid learns through hard work and hard knocks. Lolly-gaggers and quitters don't stand a chance in sports. Kids are certainly not getting those lessons in school, where touchy-feely has replaced logic and discipline. You want a kid to become a better person and have better self-esteem? Teach them how to learn and then encourage that impulse. A kid will develop more self-esteem taking on challenging puzzles and solving them than being told their feeling matter.
Which is the disconnect between technology and the mass market. The customer does not want to know how the computer works -- they only want it to work when they get it out of the box. Mind you, processor speed and hard drive are such that they really aren't the most critical factors in buying a PC anymore for your average user.
This is why Microsoft rules the software landscape, Linux is finding it difficult to make inroads into the PC market, and why Apple has everybody enamored with the iPod. Familiarity breeds contempt, and contempt breeds lack of understanding. All the customer knows is that their laptop works when they turn it out and Windows pops up, and they can use that to load songs on their iPod. The behind-the-scenes does not interest them, which is why the general populace doesn't have a clue about Net Neutrality or DRM.
I ascribe it to the fall of the hobbyist. In the heady days at the beginning of PC age, when guys were buying Altair kits and Ham radio ruled, I think there was a higher level of curiosity. But now I don't think ham radio clubs, computer clubs, or even astronomy clubs are popular anymore, given the instant access to information we have now. I see this trend continuing as long as technology does not require the user to put any thought into it.
Indeed. School used to be filled with logic and reasoning -- kids had to learn to think. Now schools are more interested in childrens' self-esteem and socialization. Frankly, part of the problem is that the newest crop of teachers don't know logic or have excellent critical reasoning skills. As each generation passes, we get further from the Aristotelian virtues and knowledge becomes more watered-down.
Nowhere is that more borne out than in computer programming. Logic is the backbone of programming and if you haven't got a decent grounding in it, your coding skills are going to be atrocious, no matter what language you use. I remember when I was going to school to about 8 years ago to get a programming certification so I could shift careers. There I was, in my mid-30s with 18-year-olds all around, who were more interested in Napster and trying to download porn onto the school computers than actually learning the skills they needed. They used to razz me quite a bit, but I got through the whole set of courses with a 4.0 because I had the logical background that made going from pseudo-code to finished program easier.
Until we get back to teaching fundamental reasoning skills in school, each succeeding generation is going to take their environment more and more for granted, and understand it less and less.
Scientific research is being abused even more in this sensationalist age. Listen, experimental design is simple, really, and therein lies the problem. It's easy enough to come up with a study, run on a limited population, at a level of probability just under then better-than-random threshold that will prove your pet theory. The number of factors involved in the commission of crimes (violent or otherwise) are so diverse, that to attribute it to one factor is absurd. Could it be an increase in law enforcement? Perhaps an increase in affluence in certain areas and/or reduction in poverty? Could it be the increased vigilance of people in general?
I find it very hard to believe that this study could have controls tight enough to take into account all the other factors involved in crime. I'm sure there are enough other things out there that correlate positively/negatively with the reduction in lead in gasoline that you could use this study to prove anything you like.